LibGuides: Library Resources for People Who Have Experienced Incarceration: Library Services and Continuing Education

New Mexico State Library Resources

New Mexico State Library Databases and Digital Resources

Brainfuse Help Now - HelpNow provides 24/7 on-demand tutoring across all K-12 subjects. Not only does HelpNow provide unscheduled, instant tutoring and homework help, it features an innovative writing lab, high-stakes assessment and test preparation, ELL/ESL support, and foreign language assistance.
Brainfuse Job Now -Live, anytime, anywhere job assistance, including up-to-date nation-wide and local job search engines, professional resume critique and proven interview techniques. Experience personalized career center seamlessly integrated with advanced virtual technology to help job seekers of diverse backgrounds and needs.

El Portal - El Portal connects users of all ages to newspapers, magazines, journal articles, and encyclopedias across a variety of topics. In addition to academic titles, El Portal contains topics of general interest like gardening, leisure, auto repair, and more.

CNM Central New Mexico College: Formerly Incarcerated Reintegration Success Team (FIRST)

Central New Mexico Community College helps students who have experienced incarceration overcome challenges through the Formerly Incarcerated Reintegration Success Team (F.I.R.S.T) program achieve their educational goals.

Resources, networking opportunities, and support to finish high school or college is achieved through mentoring and assistance to obtain educational funding, navigate release conditions, and get help clearing misdemeanor warrants through the NM Outreach Court.

ALA Libraries and Incarceration: Resources for Reentry

Resources for Librarians "This resource guide provides information on providing library services within correctional institutions, including ALA policies and standards, a select bibliography, directories of organizations that support library services and intellectual freedom for justice-involved individuals, along with resources for libraries to provide justice-involved individuals upon reentry into their communities."

Resources for Reentry This section of the LibGuide provides links to literacy programs, housing, job placement, digital literacy skills, and non-profit organizations with a focus on reentry support.

ALA Policy and Perspectives
"Everyone deserves access to opportunity, including individuals navigating reentry after
experiencing incarceration. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, each year, more than 600,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons within the United States and 9 million are released from jail. Libraries provide access to an array of programs and services offered by government agencies, for-profits, and nonprofits. Libraries connect patrons who have experienced incarceration with the resources to learn computer skills, improve literacy, attain degrees, gain access to substance abuse meetings, and more.
From assisting individuals affected by the opioid crisis to providing patrons with opportunities to use computers and reconnect with their families, libraries are places of opportunity that increase the success rate of reentry. This potential can be realized only with increased funding for library programming and policy-maker awareness on the benefits that libraries offer."

Prisoners' Right to Read: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights - The American Library Association is committed to preserving intellectual freedom for incarcerated individuals.

Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People Initiative

Re-entry Toolkits: Helping the Formerly Incarcerated at the Library by The Programming Librarian Hannah Arata, ALA Public Programs Office, interviews Emily Steele, adult and digital services librarian, and Lesley Garrett, bookmobile coordinator of the McCracken County Public Library in Paducah, Kentucky, about their reentry toolkits, funded by the American Dream Literacy Initiative grant, that help individuals with technology equipment and digital literacy skills.

InformationLiteracy.gov

Informationliteracy.gov disseminates successful practices, tools, and programs related to financial, health, digital, and other information literacy subject areas. Focusing on resources and programs delivered locally, Informationliteracy.gov supports library and museum practitioners and community-based organizations across the country in their efforts to meet community needs and provide resources and trainings on these subjects.

Digital Literacy

Financial Literacy

Health Literacy

National Institute of Corrections (NIC) Library Collection

"NIC has a vast collection of publications produced by its own agency staff about almost every topic in corrections. This includes studies, guides, and evidence-based best practices for agencies of all levels of corrections. In addition, our website also points to many other resources on the internet that might be useful when learning about particular topics."

Topics in Corrections

Data-Driven Librarianship in Corrections

Parole

Reentry and Transition Resources

Reentry Annotated Bibliography

Library Services and Incarceration Video Series - San Francisco Public Library

Library of Congress

Library of Congress Research Guide About Reentry and Employment Resources for Released Individuals

"The intent of this guide is to provide justice-involved individuals who are incarcerated, or were formerly incarcerated, with starting points that will assist them with their reentry into society. The focus of this guide is to provide resources that may provide assistance to those seeking information on education, training, and employment. These resources are available on a national level, with links to local assistance. Check with your local, county, and state governments, non-profits, and faith-based institutions for additional resources." -

Author: Lynn Weinstein, Business Librarian, Science & Business Reading Room Created: May 2, 2019 - Last Updated: December 11, 2023

Library Standards for Adult Correctional Institutions

Revisioning Library Standards: Libraries can be a lifeline for people who are incarcerated or detained and their families and communities, especially at this critical time in our nation’s history when many library, education, and social service practitioners are working to address the socioeconomic gaps that often lead to incarceration. In 2021, a task force of correctional library workers and other institutional stakeholders headed by ODLOS began work on a massive reimagining of the American Library Association’s 1992 Library Standards for Adult Correctional Institutions. The new edition will be forward looking and expand the scope of the standards to be as inclusive as possible. The new Standards will heed the current phenomenon of mass incarceration, the inequitable incarceration rates of BIPOC individuals, and the rising rates of incarceration of women (especially women of color) and pay special attention to the incarceration of LGBTQIA+ individuals, undocumented individuals, and youth in jails, prisons, and other detention facilities, as well as to the information needs of returning individuals.

If you’d like to provide feedback on the Standards or join the Standards working group, please send an inquiry to ALAStandards@gmail.com

Revisioning Standards for Library Services for the Incarcerated and Detained and Books from New Mexico State Library's Collection

Library Services and Incarceration by Jeanie Austin
ISBN: 9780838949450
Publication Date: 2021-11-17
As part of our mission to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all library patrons, our profession needs to come to terms with the consequences of mass incarceration, which have saturated the everyday lives of people in the United States and heavily impacts Black, Indigenous, and people of color; LGBTQ people; and people who are in poverty. Jeanie Austin, a librarian with San Francisco Public Library's Jail and Reentry Services program, helms this important contribution to the discourse, providing tools applicable in a variety of settings. This text covers practical information about services in public and academic libraries, and libraries in juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons, while contextualizing these services for LIS classrooms and interdisciplinary scholars. It powerfully advocates for rethinking the intersections between librarianship and carceral systems, pointing the way towards different possibilities. This clear-eyed text begins with an overview of the convergence of library and information science and carceral systems within the United States, summarizing histories of information access and control such as book banning, and the ongoing work of incarcerated people and community members to gain more access to materials; examines the range of carceral institutions and their forms, including juvenile detention, jails, immigration detention centers, adult prisons, and forms of electronic monitoring; draws from research into the information practices of incarcerated people as well as individual accounts to examine the importance of information access while incarcerated; shares valuable case studies of various library systems that are currently providing both direct and indirect services, including programming, book clubs, library spaces, roving book carts, and remote reference; provides guidance on collection development tools and processes; discusses methods for providing reentry support through library materials and programming, from customized signage and displays to raising public awareness of the realities of policing and incarceration; gives advice on supporting community groups and providing outreach to transitional housing; includes tips for building organizational support and getting started, with advice on approaching library management, creating procedures for challenges, ensuring patron privacy, and how to approach partners who are involved with overseeing the functioning of the carceral facility; and concludes with a set of next steps, recommended reading, and points of reflection.
Reference Librarianship and Justice by Kate Adler (Editor); Ian Beilin (Editor); Eamon Tewell (Editor)
ISBN: 9781634000512
Publication Date: 2017-11-01
Reference work often receives short shrift in the contemporary discourse and practice of librarianship. Reference Librarianship & Justice: History, Practice & Praxis highlights the unique position of reference librarianship, a liminal and dialectical space, potentially distinct from the power dynamics of classroom instruction and singular in its mission and practice. At heart, reference is a conversation and partnership. The stakes are significant, not only because of the unique potential for social justice work but because of the risk that the profession is now overlooking reference's central importance. This book makes a passionate case for reference work in a manner that is historically, socially and politically compelling. The book's three sections explore the praxis, history and practice of reference librarianship in the context of social justice. Praxis grounds us theoretically while seeking to trouble and broaden traditional academic conventions, drawing on diverse epistemological frameworks and disciplines both inside and outside of LIS literatures. History grounds us in the past and makes the case that reference librarianship has a long tradition of social justice work, providing intellectual access, partnership and guidance from the Jim Crow South to the War on Poverty. Finally, Dispatches from the Field explores the contemporary practice of social-justice oriented reference librarianship, in prisons, in archives and beyond. We see how the rich genealogy of social justice in reference librarianship is at work today.
Libraries in Prisons by William J. Coyle
ISBN: 9780313247699
Publication Date: 1987-03-23
This is the first book-length study of prison libraries to provide a comprehensive overview of their history and to analyze their development in terms of the goals of correctional agencies and the values and traditions of librarianship. The author's introduction points out that in recent years new considerations have made it more difficult to clearly determine the value and purpose of prison libraries with respect to both the inmates who use them and the institutions of which they are a part. A heightened sense of professional consciousness in the library profession, expanded awareness of the uses of libraries, and changes in the laws and politics of criminal justice have all contributed to new ways of thinking about prison libraries, and have made a seemingly once simple matter complex.
Down for the Count by Brenda Vogel
ISBN: 9780810829275
Publication Date: 1995-01-01
Examines all aspects of establishing prison library service, describing process models and procedures that can result in overcoming negative sentiment. Includes examples of prison library regulation, state prison library standards, recommended readings, and a list of advocacy organizations. An outline of a clerical training program for inmate assistants and a user satisfaction survey are also included.
Library Standards for Adult Correctional Institutions, 1992 by American Correctional Association Staff; Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Administration Staff
ISBN: 9780838975831
Publication Date: 1992-01-01
Libraries Inside by Rhea J. Rubin; Daniel Suvak; Richard Lee (Editor, Illustrator)
ISBN: 9780786400614
Publication Date: 1995-02-01
For the most part, institutional librarians are isolated from the remainder of the profession and have little opportunity to discuss the unique demands they face with their colleagues. Ten current or former prison librarians cover all aspects of the prison library here: the prison community, the planning process, professional staff, inmate staff, collection development, services, programs, literacy, budgeting, facility and equipment, automation, and legal services. The contributors are Daniel Suvak, Rhea Joyce Rubin, Sandy Souza, Stephen M. Mallinger, Diana Reese, Nancy Pitts, Ann Piascik, Timothy Brown, Vibeke Lehmann, and Jay Ihrig.
A Place at the Table by Kathleen D. McCook
ISBN: 9780838907887
Publication Date: 2000-06-01
From urban giants to small towns across the country, there is a palpable hunger for a greater sense of community. Libraries, as they continue to provide a vital public service, are in a unique position to help satisfy this hunger.
A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca
ISBN: 9780802116024
Publication Date: 2001-06-06
From one of America's most acclaimed poets comes a powerful memoir of childhood on the small farms of New Mexico, his adolescence spent in orphanages and detention centers, his years as a drug dealer, and his stunning personal redemption inside the walls of a maximum security prison.