Volume 10, May 22, 2014 for the WSL Updates mailing list

Topics include:

1) FIRST TUESDAYS – MAKE YOUR WEEDING EASIER

2) CE GRANTS FOR STARTING STRONG

3) WALE 2014 SESSION PROPOSALS

4) 2014 SUMMER READING LISTS AVAILABLE

5) FREE CE OPPORTUNITIES NEXT WEEK

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1) FIRST TUESDAYS – MAKE YOUR WEEDING EASIER

Weeding – whether it’s in your garden or in your library, it’s a chore. Find out how to make weeding in your library easier at the next First Tuesdays, Weeding made easy. At this free webinar, Chris Rippel of the Central Kansas Library system, will demonstrate how to use “Collection Manager,” a free Excel spreadsheet that he has developed to produce data to make it easier for public librarians to weed their collections. Chris will explain how to use this tool to discover:

• Which collections to weed;
• Which collections to expand;
• Which collections to decrease;
• How many titles to purchase in each collection.

Designed as a continuing education opportunity for staff of libraries in Washington State, this free web presentation, which will take place on June 3, 2014, from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. PDT, lets attendees share their skills and successes and learn about new topics. Sessions are recorded so that others may listen at their own convenience. For more information about First Tuesdays, visit sos.wa.gov/q/tuesdays. For instructions on joining the presentation, visit sos.wa.gov/q/FirstTuesdays.

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2) CE GRANTS FOR STARTING STRONG

Each year, the Starting Strong Institute brings together members of Washington’s early learning community in a conference that facilitates the sharing of innovative ideas and strengthens the connections between early learning and K-12 professionals. The 2014 Starting Strong Institute will be held at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick, Tuesday, August 5 – Wednesday, August 6, 2014. The conference will include breakout sessions focused on P-3 (pre-school through 3rd grade) alignment and implementation including WaKIDS, the Early Learning Guidelines and Common Core, and Community Collaboration. For more information about the conference and to register, visit sos.wa.gov/q/OSPIStrong.

Librarians and support staff who need financial assistance to attend this event may be eligible for Continuing Education (CE) grants, provided they work ten or more hours per week (paid or volunteer) in a library or library consortia that is eligible to receive LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) funds. Training must meet one or more of the 7 LSTA priorities and have a direct benefit to the library customer. To provide additional support during these hard economic times, the Washington State Library is temporarily lowering the match for CE grants to 25%, and will cover the remaining 75% of eligible expenses. CE Grant applications must be postmarked no later than 30 days before the beginning of the conference. For additional information about CE Grants and to apply, visit sos.wa.gov/q/CE.

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3) WALE 2014 SESSION PROPOSALS

WALE (Washington Library Employees), an interest group of the Washington Library Association, is seeking presenters for its 2014 annual conference, “Prism of Possibilities: Lighting the Future,” which will be held October 27 – 29, 2014, at Campbell’s Resort in Lake Chelan, Washington. Please consider sharing the experiences that have enabled you to better yourself, your job, and those you serve. Potential topics include anything that you have developed, borrowed, or improved upon – a new tool for the trade, a new skill set, a new way of looking at things. Also – think outside the library. Presenters from outside of libraries are welcome to submit proposals.

To submit:

• A half-day or full-day Preconference Workshop proposal for Monday, October 27, go to sos.wa.gov/q/WALE2014Pre;
• A 75-minute Conference Session proposal for Tuesday, October 28, go to sos.wa.gov/q/WALE2014Session.

All conference proposals are due by Friday, June 13, 2014.

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4) 2014 SUMMER READING LISTS AVAILABLE

Starr LaTronica, president of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of ALA, has stated, “Summer reading helps prevent the summer slide that affects many children each year. By encouraging children to stay engaged in reading throughout the summer at home and at their library they will be more prepared for the next school year.”

To encourage K-8 students to continue to read during the summer months, ALSC has updated and released three Summer Reading lists that offer a multitude of book titles to keep children engaged in reading throughout the summer. Each list may be downloaded for free from the ALSC website and is available in color or black and white. Lists can be customized to include library information, summer hours, and summer reading programs for children. To find out more and to download the lists, go to ala.org/alsc/2014-summer-reading-list.

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5) FREE CE OPPORTUNITIES NEXT WEEK

Monday, May 26:

• ProQuest Administrator Module (Language: Spanish) (ProQuest); 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/PQ1040;
• ProQuest Administrator Module (Language: Portuguese) (ProQuest); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/PQ1041;

Tuesday, May 27:

• Secrets to Harnessing Powerful Employee Performance (Training Magazine Network); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/Harness;
• Introduction to Fundraising Planning (GrantSpace); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/GS27May;
• My Library’s Future – What is a MakerSpace and Deciding If Your Patrons Would Benefit From a 3D Printer (Texas State Library); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/TSL27May;
• Understanding Software Agreements: The Legal Concerns Nonprofits Should Know (4Good); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/4Good27MayPM;

Wednesday, May 28:

• NCompass Live: Tech Talk with Michael Sauers: Introducing GAFE (Google Apps for Education) to Elementary Students (NCompass Live); 8:00 – 9:00 a.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/NComp28May;
• Diversity Awareness for Effective Nonprofits (4Good); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/4Good28May;
• Transforming Novices into Experts – Faster and Cheaper Ways (Training Magazine Network); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/novice;
• Feeding a Need: Helping Youth Find Summer Meals (TechSoup); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/feedneed;
• Advanced Searching: Beyond the Single Search Box (ProQuest); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/PQ1038;
• Health Happens in Libraries: Technology Planning for eHealth (WebJunction); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/WJ28May;
• Getting Answers: OCLC WorldShare Management Services Online Chat (OCLC); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/OCLC28May;
• Spotlight! on National Library of Medicine (NLM) Resources: Mobile Resources (National Network of Libraries of Medicine MidContinental Region); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/NLM28May;
• 45 Great FUNdraising Ideas in 60 Minutes (4Good); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/4Good28MayPM;
• Proposal Writing Basics (GrantSpace); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/GS28May;

Thursday, May 29:

• Introduction to the ProQuest Platform (ProQuest); 7:00 – 7:30 a.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/PQ1039;
• Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want (Training Magazine Network); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/growgo;
• Proposal Budgeting Basics (GrantSpace); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT: sos.wa.gov/q/GS29May;
• Leading Without Authority (WSL); 10:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. PDT, North Central Regional Library Distribution Center, Wenatchee: sos.wa.gov/q/LeadWithout.

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The Washington State Library has gone social! Friend/follow us at:

• Facebook: on.fb.me/FBWSL;
• Twitter: twitter.com/WAStateLib.

Children’s Books

The Face at the Window, by Regina Hanson.  Clarion Books, ©1997.

Exceptional children’s picture book that illustrates empathy for the mentally ill.

Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry, by Bebe Moore Campbell.  Putnam, ©2003

Nicely illustrated children’s picture book that explains mental illness to the very young.

Novels

Halfway House, by Katharine Noel.  Atlantic Monthly, ©2006

Set in a small town in New Hampshire, this is the story of a young woman’s psychotic breakdown—and her family’s subsequent turmoil.

 72 hour hold, by Bebe Moore Campbell. Knopf, ©2005

An African-American mother struggles to save her 18-year old daughter from the devastating consequences of bipolar disorder.

Memoirs

The Day The Voices Stopped.  By Ken Steele.  Basic Books, ©2001

The late Ken Steele wrote a painfully honest memoir about his life spent on the streets–and in and out of psychiatric hospitals–until a new medication gave him a new lease on life.

Madness: A Bipolar Life, by Marya Hornbacher.  Houghton-Mifflin, ©2008.

The author of “Wasted” takes us inside her own desperate attempts to control violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, and self-mutilation before she learned how to manage her symptoms.

The Center Cannot Hold, by Elyn R. Saks.  Hyperion, ©2007

A memoir of paranoid schizophrenia by an accomplished professor recounts her first symptoms at the age of eight, her efforts to hide the severity of her condition, and the obstacles she has overcome in the course of her treatment and marriage.

Non Fiction

An Unquiet Mind.  By Kay Redfield Jamison.  Vintage, ©1996

Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Kay Jamison speaks about bipolar disorder drawing from her personal experiences.

  Surviving Schizophrenia (HarperCollins ©2001) and Surviving Manic Depression (Basic Books ©2002) , by E. Fuller Torrey. 

These guides for patients, families and the general public are considered classics on the topic of treatment and advocacy.

Crazy: a father’s search through America’s mental health madness.  By Pete Early.  Putnam, ©2006.

Pete Early used his journalistic skills to chronicle his—and others– harrowing odyssey to find help for their mentally ill loved ones.

 Connections: a self-help and resource guide.  NAMI Greater Seattle, ©2006

An essential guide for every library collection for individuals with mental illness, their families, and social service professionals.

Feature Films

 Shine.  New Line Video, ©1997

Australian pianist David Helfgott suffered a nervous breakdown at the zenith of his career.  With the support of friends, he returned to the concert hall.

 A Beautiful Mind.  Universal Studios, ©2002

Nobel Prize winner John Nash was a brilliant mathematician who spent years overwhelmed by his  schizophrenic delusions

 Canvas.  Universal, ©2008

Outstanding portrayal of the challenges faced by a man and his son when their wife/mother is hospitalized.

Documentary

Back From Madness: The Struggle For Sanity.  HBO Productions, ©2003

Follows four psychiatric patients for one to two years. The program is about the patients themselves, and the inner strength that is required of them as they search for some relief from the severe mental illnesses they are coping with–schizophrenia, manic-depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suicidal depression

Websites

 Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Admin (SAMHSA)

National Institute of Mental Health

Mental Health America

National Alliance on Mental Illness

My Work Day: I unlock the library and start turning it on, taking off my jacket and stuff to stay awhile, change the backup tape, put a new battery in the radio on my belt, type in passwords for the computers and the level of user, go unlock the book return box and switch bins.  When movement is called the crew will report in, I log the time and greet them, the talk dwells on whatever happened since the last we saw each other – dreams, visits, plans for today’s work and adjustments in operations. They check for overdues on hold, ILLs, and reserves against the incoming materials. The ILL clerk starts getting the outgoing ILLs bagged and addressed and all the paperwork pulled and the status changed. I look for incoming email, ILL requests and missions from headquarters. The new books are linked and finished processing, the Acquisitions Report checked against our version of reality – and there are too many missing book orders so a lot of typing is done to tell them so. I get to check every outgoing package for content address and then seal it up for shipping. After the morning work is done and Recall is called the crew leaves together and I take the mail and the distribution to the Communications Center and the Mailroom. Dropping off and picking up, some days there are three bins full with new book boxes and some days only half a bin without the newspapers.
Lunch is alone, in the quiet of the library with a new magazine to browse in front of me, the pickle, sandwich and apple don’t take long and I am up and breaking down the mail, newspapers, magazines, and opening incoming ILLs, ours returning or those requested. I go online the log in the reception, print a sheet for the item and give them to the ILL clerk. The crew starts to trickle back in after their lunch, which was not much better than mine but in the company of their peers, under the watch of the Corrections Officers. The book return box is emptied again and the library prepares for the influx of patrons.
I register new patrons, the Chain came in yesterday and the new guys start showing up, I look for information, find books that are asked for and show my clerks how to find Labor Unions in the Yellow pages. The library is humming, actually it is closer to a low roar, but it is a mellow roar not an angry one. Different groups at different tables, the Corrections Officer that monitored the movement into the library cut it off at forty, and sent about twenty inmates away. As the other recreation or education services are cut or closed because of staffing problems or weather the library becomes much bigger an event in the inmates’ choices for time well spent.
We are open for three periods this afternoon, from 12:40 to 3:45 and the time flies, I am not finished when Recall is sounded and everyone moves out. The crew tells me to have a great weekend and they will see me on Monday.  I turn all the computers off, put the radio and certain keys away, I finish typing the missing books on my response to the November report and email it to headquarters and log off the computer.

When I give briefings to visitors to the library I am often asked ‘what do they read?’ and the cheap throw away answer is ‘True Crime, of course’. The truth is that ‘they’ (the inmates) read everything that you do, except they can’t go online and the Department of Corrections has a list of books and types of information that would be bad to have them read while in prison, mostly about security issues. I think the more important question is ‘what do they steal from the library?’

I mostly think that only stupid people steal from a free library inside a prison fence where they can never get it outside. But to what they steal, they start with stealing the sports section of the newspapers, for betting on fantasy football or other real events. They steal the colored pictures of beautiful models digitally enhanced, if not also under a plastic surgeon’s care. Those things are easy to hide and pull out when one has forgotten what their sexual desires were focused on. Some of the fancies are a bit stranger but I have purposely missed mentioning those.

The theft that is costly is of books, ‘the self-weeding collection’ as we in the prison libraries understand it, and the most popular ones are the ones that give them POWER. Robert Greene puts together a book, titled “The 48 Laws of Power” and it is immediately stolen. Yes, we do have a 3M security system and all the books are sensitized and how long do you think it takes them to figure it out? However it happens, the book is now gone, and we buy a replacement. Robert Greene comes out with another title “The Art of Seduction”, and it is immediately stolen and I buy a replacement. Do you see the pattern here? He has a third book “33 Stategies of War” and we haven’t seen it since the second circulation. I am buying all three in paperback and will read them for they do have some excellent information that I have gleaned from a life time of reading, and Robert Greene found the same and put it together nicely. I expect they will also be stolen, for the inmates that steal from our libraries inside of prison have lost everything, feel no control of their lives and are afraid of most people and things around them. So they steal what they hope will make them stronger, and then don’t read it, just hide it and hug it for warmth and feel it makes them a player again.

Kind of like those self improvement books, how to build one’s abs – you can buy five or six of them – but until you start curling your body and flexing the core and working tirelessly in motion the abs don’t change – not from hugging those books or putting them on the shelves, they must be read, practiced and re-read and understood. But then I did mention what kind of people steal books, didn’t I? Luckily most inmates just check the books out and return them very late, overdues abound, for inmates have a personal time that doesn’t match the date due stamp – not very fair, most books come in on time or are re-newed, circulation is about seven thousand items per month, and I only have to replace the stuff that wears out or is lost. I only have about twenty books ‘missing’ in action a month. Write another one, Robert Greene.

The segregation unit houses those inmates that have to be apart from the rest, and for twenty-three hours a day they are alone with their cell and two paperback books. So the library provides two thick paperbacks a week for them to read. My recommendations are: Border Triology, Killer Angels, Gates of Fire, A Soldier of the Great War, King Hereafter, Eisenhorn, Wheel of Time, Dune, Song of Ice and Fire, Lord of the Rings, Lonesome Dove, Honor Harrington, Wars of Light and Shadow. Those that are part of a series are only a problem if the author dies with the series unfinished, if they don’t write faster and publish more it could happen. Still there are patrons from Seg that only want magazines with lots of pictures, I provide those also. When you have nothing to do, reading is a great way to escape from your solitude. I have read those titles so I must share the way out.

I have three inmate library clerks to train of four positions, and it is amazing how little they know about work and life and the library. I have had much success training real workers in the past, they understand work and what kind isn’t a problem, for all real work is similar. If I get someone with good life skills I can train them also, great attitude and harmony with the lesser universe and work is just a different instrument to play on and they dance through our work day. I could blame lack of library knowledge on the school system, television or credit cards and book stores — but it could be they just shouldn’t be library clerks if they were never real library patrons – how much customer service can you explain to someone that has never been a customer?

Less than a week on the job and they already want the library to be run differently, they want more creative time, they want to expound on their previous job and how wonderful they did there, they are becoming afraid to ask questions of me (have I been biting their heads off, or just am snappy having little tolerance for stupidity). I emphasized that they must look at the computer screen as they scan barcodes, and make sure they are doing what they think they should. But they know everything about computers and it doesn’t look cool to keep looking at work instead of holding a wonderful conversation. They don’t understand they have so much more to learn, that fellow needs more time shelf reading and shelving. There is one advantage in their slow work habits, they can’t get ahead of me, even when they try they are falling behind the power curve – it is all mine. The experienced clerk and I laugh a lot about the new guys, but then we keep hoping tomorrow they will be a bit better and learn another lesson or two. We are making them earn that forty-two cents an hour, shouldn’t I get some extra compensation, too?

I give all the assistance I can in each patron’s search for truth and its roots. The prison has taken most of their identity away and stuffed them in white t-shirts and khaki pants. All alone they have little power, together with a tradition and a history they become greater than just felons. They know that they can’t be Americans any more, they have no Rights when they leave the Corrections system, as former felons they can’t have weapons, can’t serve in office nor vote. Unless their civil rights are restored – the law makes a felon a permanent lower class in America.

The only way I can make a big difference in the prison is with a respectful, challenging but helpful education of the inmate into what is in the library, what we can bring into the library and what he can do with his new knowledge. He has to do all the work, and he has to survive and he has to spread the word about what he has found. I always like one old hand inmate leading a new guy from the incoming chain around to get registered and shown where the good books are, another one for our side.

Earl Dungey – McNeil Island Corrections Center Library

And many have done a “little time”  They include Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, St. Paul, Christopher Columbus, and writers Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Miguel Cervantes.  How one gets inside a prison isn’t as important as what they do there and after they are released, or so this illustrious list of names would have you believe.

There are fifteen prisons, one of them for women in Washington, and another will be opening soon.  They house about 18,000 inmates, only ten of the fifteen have a contract for library services with the Washington State Library.  There are 28,000 offenders in community supervision with local library support. Budget cuts have brought the library staff in the branch libraries down to one FTE per branch.  This means that the library branch is only going to be open for twenty hours per week, in institutions where the population is from 800 to 2400 inmates, most inmates will not be able to get to the library for their needs.  The services provided are common to most public libraries:

·     Books (including large print, graphic novels, YA, children’s picture, audio)

·     Magazines (including popular, foreign language –Spanish, Vietnamese)

·     Music CDs and Cassettes (all genres)

·     Interlibrary loan

·     Reference (no legal research)

·     Employment (library clerks)

Before the major budget cuts under Governor Locke, there were two or three FTE per Corrections Center and the libraries were open five days a week with three evening hours to cover those inmates that were working, almost sixty hours for patron access.  The Department of Corrections staff was also served by the library and professional journals and books were available.  After the budget cuts the Corrections staff were no long a focal point of library operations in Corrections.  The library starts to be labeled as the Inmates’ Library, although there is still limited staff support.

One benefit of being the one full time employee at the library branch is that the training and responsibilities were increased, and the immediate supervision was reduced; the paraprofessional level and pay were increased to reflect the added responsibilities. The biggest disadvantage is lack of support and coverage for vacations and medical absence. So as soon as either happens the library is effectively closed except for some temporary assignment of a Librarian or Library Associate from another institution for a day or two. When the position becomes empty the hiring process begins immediately, but new hires will have to go through CORE training before being allowed to work their library branch.

And at the Department of Corrections… When the chance came to return to a prison library I jumped on it and have been fully employed ever since.  They just don’t describe the eight hour days and the mad rush of impatient patrons, all certain the universe revolves around them and only them first… and always. That might scare most gentle library types away…

I expect that if you haven’t worked inside a prison that you think there are too many terrible people around and it is dangerous, and that might be almost true. But I have about seven years in prison libraries and only one half-hearted fight the entire time I have been working, the real fights are held elsewhere so they can’t be interrupted by staff and the Emergency Response Team. The more dangerous problem is staff being influenced to break the rules for an inmate – name the rule and they will try to get a staff member to break it, there are almost as many illegal activities inside a prison as outside. When they put tobacco off limits inside the facility the inmates say it just changed the price of the tobacco – since a heavy smoker still smells like stale smoke, I would have to agree that someone is still smoking.

Still like the world outside the fence, most prisoners (inmates, felons and violators) inside the fence are going about behaving well and getting along. They do demand that staff obey the rules and regulations (although they are sure they are okay to break the ones they need to) and there is a long list of customs and polite manners that other inmates know and dare not break without paying the penalty for crossing the line. Everyone makes choices and stands on what they have chosen to do. I watch, work and talk about this and other things with the questioning patrons and penalized, every work day. One never needs count the minutes and the hours for the days fly full.

I need to expound on ILS, Institutional Library Services, to entice you to join in this happy fray.  You have a population of people separated from America’s culture and commerce, for healing and treatment or programming. This population needs access to the outside and a library can provide entertainment and education without subjecting the outside population, you, to the stress of contact with the separated persons. That could be what is going on, I am not sure, but some one has decided that a library can assist in the return of this special population to normal society. Is there empirical proof that a library can make an incorrigible into a better human being? I like to point to Red and Malcolm X, and expect that you know not everyone goes to nor uses the library for its maximum potential.

I work in the Institutional Library Services to help provide that help in finding one’s way out of the present and into a past and a better future. I know that I am called on daily to bring a change in knowledge, attitude and satisfy one’s question without an answer. Do I make a difference? only in that I open the door and allow some one in, they get to open the books and they have to have an open mind. That may be all the difference needed. More library keepers are needed far from the flag pole and all the glory in the Capital, the Washington State Library serves less than twenty institutions, serving over fifteen thousand or so patrons with no other library service.

Rehab, Recovery and Re-Entry: the role of Institutional Library Services in Washington State

Presenter:

Kathleen Benoun – Western State Hospital Patients Library

Over the ages, many have flown over the cuckoo’s nest.  People who have been hospitalized for psychosis include philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche, King George III, singer James Taylor, Mary Todd Lincoln, Vincent Van Gogh and sci-fi writer Philip K Dick

That changed in the early 1970s, when the State Library agreed to provide full library services and staffing at the major institutions of Washington State.   For a short and wonderful time, institutional libraries were well-funded and staffed.  Western State Hospital had two professional librarians, 3 to 4 library assistants and many patient clerk/pages.  Western also had two separate and distinct library collections: one for the patients and one for the professional staff.  But times changed.  The budget cuts began in the mid 1980s.  Library contracts with smaller facilities, such as the Soldiers Home in Orting and Interlake School and Lakeland Village in Medical Lake were not renewed.  Collections and staff were absorbed by larger institutions.  It was a trend that has not stopped.  The most recent budget casualties include the libraries at Rainier School in Buckley,   Fircrest School in Seattle and research libraries at the two state psychiatric hospitals.  And all this has happened during a Washington State population boom.  

So what is it really like to work inside a major psychiatric hospital?  If you believe that art and literature can elevate the human spirit, then a career in ILS is for you.  Sometimes ILS life is lonely, but it is never boring.   And work in ILS might be the most satisfying job you’ve ever had.  I serve the same patron that the public and academic library serves, but with a big difference.  I serve them “in sickness and in health.”  I am in a position to know the whole person, something typically denied the public librarian who typically meets people with non-medicated psychiatric illnesses.  

Who are the mentally ill?  Mental illness can occur anytime during the life cycle and has no preference for gender, social class, ethnicity or I.Q.  And there are more life events that can result in hospitalization.  They include traumatic brain injury or brain damage due to drug overuse.  Personality disorders, such as Borderline Personality Disorder, can result in repeated hospitalizations because such thought disorders are  not treatable with medication.  Some patients are committed by the courts, some are voluntary.  Some will stay weeks, or months, or years.  Some will come and go over a lifetime.

Today’s psychiatric hospital is modeled on the “treatment mall” concept.  Basically, imagine a college campus where a team of advisors create a curriculum based on patient needs.  A patient may need education about finances, drug education, stress management skills, relapse prevention, etc.  Visits to the library are covered in leisure education groups.  When they come to Eastern or Western State Hospital they will find a library very similar to that of a small public branch.  We purchase popular magazines,  fiction and non-fiction on a variety of topics.  And we specialize in lay literature regarding psychiatric and psychological disorders.  We provide interlibrary loan service so that patients may have access beyond the institutional walls.  We provide a lot of reference work.  We serve those who walk in and those who are confined to their wards.  The hottest check-outs are movies and music.  Especially music!  Music is so popular on campus that we have listening stations at the two psychiatric hospital libraries.  This attraction draws a lot of walk-in traffic!  We also offer supervised internet access at the two hospital libraries.  Psychiatric patients must be supervised at state-owned/state-maintained internet stations.  Prison inmates have no such access. 

I mentioned before that the ILS branches are staffed by one full-time person.  The branches also employ and train inmates and patients who are paid from institutional funds.  They are trained to shelve material, process new material, assist customers in finding material on the shelves and other tasks as needed.  The host institutions value this vocational training very highly. 

Our lives are made all the more interesting by the fact that we are employed by the State Library in a state institution with its own rules, policies and traditions.  I keep a radio by my side to summon security officers in case of trouble.  Yes, there is trouble from disgruntled patrons from time to time.  But most calls for help are for medical emergencies, such as seizures.  Like public libraries, additions to our collection may be criticized. The most challenged materials at the hospitals are the movies.  Some wards will not allow any R-rated film to be shown in the common area.  At this time, we are contracted to provide lay material for leisure, education and recovery at the hospitals.  Hospital staff would dearly love to supplement their curriculum needs with our budgets, and that has been quite a diplomatic challenge. The good news is that the hospital values the library and supports it with enthusiasm.  And WSH hospital staff is responsible for 30 percent of our total circulation figures! 

 Does an on-site institutional library really make a difference?  Many years ago, there were three library staff at Western State Hospital and I used to visit the wards to present fun library programs.  One day, I was visiting a ward with elderly residents.  An old man confined to a geri chair beckoned me to him.  He told me that he loved libraries and that his father had been a famous archaeologist.  He had inherited some of the artifacts his father had brought back from his digs.  Would I like to see them?  I was not sure at all that this man was telling me true facts, as I had enough experience by then to know that many of my library patrons repeat delusional beliefs.  But I told him I’d be honored.  He insisted that I give him my name and a phone number.  Later that week, I received a phone call.  Not from the old man, but from his wife.  Yes, said she, her husband had a rare collection of antiques from archaeological digs her father-in-law had collected between 1900 and 1920.  And she’d be pleased to bring them to the hospital for viewing.  I was stunned and I told my boss about the offer.  We held a special library program and filled every chair.   Mrs. Murphy brought fantastic museum quality exhibits and told stories about her father-in-law.  Her husband was in the audience.  From time to time, he would correct her on a point or statement.  After that event, Mr. Murphy dramatically improved and was discharged home. 

Laura was one of those visitors to the library who was quiet and non-demanding.  Her stay at the hospital was fairly short as her family had the resources to provide private care.  Her diagnosis was manic depression.  Laura was discharged and I didn’t hear from her for years.  The next time we met, Laura was the new hospital consumer affairs officer, a very important liaison job.  She met me while touring all patient areas on campus.  Laura told me that she had been surprised and happy that there was a library on the hospital grounds during her stay.  Reading magazines and books encouraged her to go back to school and complete her education.   And she has been a strong library advocate ever since.

Brian was hospitalized for about 5-7 years on one of the forensic wards.  That means that he committed a felony during a psychotic episode and was sent by the court to the state psychiatric hospital for treatment rather than into the prison system.  He was one of our big readers and did his share to keep those circ figures high.  Brian improved and was released from the hospital.  I did not hear from him for three years.  Then he walked in one day to the library and placed a book on the counter.  “I’m a published writer!” he told me.  And he was.  He told me that his years in the hospital had not been wasted in sorrow and grief for his past.  He had spent his time reading and practicing fiction writing. 

             Library newspapers, magazines, and books allow the locked up & locked in — to keep in touch with the outside world.  Laura Sherbo, ILS manager, has created a new re-entry resource guide to help patients and inmates connect with community resources.  So many are required to start lives anew in communities where they are strangers.    The Re-Entry Resource guide provides information about housing, employment, apprenticeships, spiritual fellowship, and advocacy organizations.