Prison Library Collections

Paddock, Denise 

Vogel, B. (2009). Collection, coercion, and constitution: A collision with the absurd. In The prison library primer: A program for the twenty-first century (pp. 42–60). Scarecrow Press.

Brenda Vogel has been an authoritative voice on prison libraries for the last two decades. This chapter looks at prison library collections; what they should be; points out some flaws in arguments against a well-rounded collection, and gives a really good guide on creating a collection development policy that reflects library standards and can stand up to scrutiny. 

A few highlights are:

·      Collection’s, both in development and maintenance should follow same principles of librarianship as any other library.

·      There aren’t standards, basically at all. There are guidelines but none that prison administration have to adhere to. There are legal requirements that can be fulfilled but leave room for seriously limiting libraries.

·      There are some prison librarians that believe in self-censoring collections to decide what’s best for inmates. But luckily, these (at least those who put things into print) are quickly called out by others defending the principles of librarianship in prison libraries be upheld.

·      Great collection development policy justifications that are written out section by section.

This chapter does a great job of realistically looking at the likely issues a prison librarian will face- and how to be prepared. Issues being that libraries are libraries, and often can have arbitrary decisions about what isn’t acceptable, made by people outside of the library. She does a great job pointing out how and when to make the connections needed to prevent issues in the future.