Wednesday, April 30, 2014

West Philly libraries, key to student success, struggle to exist

With the help of volunteers, the Lea School's library now has limited hours for kindergarten through second grade students
by: Lauren Feiner

While Penn students might dread their weekend visits to Van Pelt Library, it is clear from the crowded cubicles and GSRs that the University would lose a valuable resource if its doors were closed. This is exactly the situation in which Philadelphia elementary school students find themselves. Because of extensive budget cuts, students are locked out of their school libraries without access to books or trained librarians.

The School Reform Commission passed a “Doomsday Budget” in late May last year, in which $304 million was cut from Philadelphia schools for the 2013-14 fiscal year. As a result, about 3,800 school employees were laid off, 24 schools were closed and money to extracurricular programs was eliminated.

Libraries, however, have been seeing cuts for over a generation, WePAC Volunteer Recruitment Coordinator Morgan Rogers Burns said. Under an increasingly tight budget, chances of regeneration seem slim. “When it comes to cutting line items for a budget, there are ways to rationalize away a librarian,” Rogers Burns said. She stressed this was her own opinion, not the stance of her organization.

A new Penn Libraries initiative is looking to expand students’ access to school libraries. Ancil George , recently named the Community Outreach Librarian at Van Pelt, is organizing efforts to get Penn students involved in expanding operations at the library of the Lea School on the 4700 block of Locust Street. Currently, with the help of a volunteer-based nonprofit called West Philadelphia Alliance for Children, the library is open on Wednesdays and Thursdays to students in kindergarten through second grade . George hopes to open the library for more days a week and to more grades, since the school serves children through eighth grade.

Rogers Burns and other advocates for school libraries argue that there are many things that a school library provides that can’t be substituted. “The main thing that a library allows students to do is self-direct their own learning,” she said. She pointed out that although this might be possible in a public library, young students rely on adults to take them to these facilities, and classroom libraries simply don’t have as wide of a selection of books as large school libraries do . “If it’s not happening at the school, there’s no promise or guarantee that it’s going to happen outside of school,” she added.

Studies also show that students who don’t have this access to books and reading education are less likely to graduate high school. A 2011 study by Donald Hernandez found that, of 4,000 students tested, 23 percent of third-grade students below National Assessment of Educational Progress reading standards later dropped out of high school. Only nine percent of third-grade students who had basic skills in reading, and only four percent of third-grade students with skills rated “proficient” dropped out of high school. A 2013 research update published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropic organization which advocates for disadvantaged children, concluded that studies continue to support the hypothesis that third-grade reading proficiency may predict graduation rates. As a result, WePAC and Penn Libraries is currently focusing on granting lower elementary school grades access to the library at Lea, although they hope to expand access to older students if given the proper resources.

WePAC and other community groups involved in school libraries and reading programs are also working to get students enthusiastic about reading. “In elementary school we would go to the library, and it was this great exciting thing ... it was the highlight of our week,” College junior Katelyn Behrman , a co-director of the Penn Reading Initiative, remembered. She has noticed throughout her involvement with PRI, in which members tutor elementary school children once a week, that without the drive for reading that a library can encourage in students, they sometimes treat the subject like geometry, thinking, “‘When am I ever going to use reading?’” she said.

“If a kid is struggling with reading in first grade, in four to five years, that gets to be a kid who thinks that school is not for him because it’s too hard,” Kate Mills said. Mills organizes the Book Choosing program at Lea coordinated by Garden Court Community Association, during which each April, students get to pick out their own books to keep, and start or add to their own home libraries.

Dylan Vizzachero , a College senior who volunteers at the Lea library once a week through WePAC, recalled the connection he felt with a student at Lea when the student confided in him that neither of his parents could read. Vizzachero assured him, “Now you’re here ... maybe one day you can read to your parents.”

“Until the school district comes and takes this off our hands, we’ll just keep opening libraries,” Rogers Burns said. So far, her organization has reopened 12 school libraries for one to two days a week. If the Lea library opens for more than two days a week with the help of Penn volunteers, it could become a model for the rest of the schools that WePAC works in, Rogers Burns said.


“All we can do as an institution is provide Band-Aids ,” said College senior Kate Herzlin , the outreach coordinator at the Kelly Writers House . “But we can’t stop the bleeding. We can only cover it up.” 

from: The Daily Pennsylvanian

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

6 Independent Bookstores That Are Thriving — and How They Do It

by: Boris Kachka and Joshua David Stein

Inside Three Lives

Inside Three Lives Photo: Shanna Ravindra

The doors closed Friday on the beautifully vaulted century-old space that houses the Rizzoli Bookstore, only the latest in a long line of midtown book emporia whose steady mass extinction seems to so handily showcase the Death of Print. Just two weeks ago, the New York Times ran a front-page story specimen blaring the headline “Literary City: Bookstore Desert.”

That story probably drove a small flood of sympathetic customers to Manhattan’s endangered booksellers (St. Mark’s Bookshop, Bank Street Bookstore, and maybe certain branches of Barnes & Noble). But alarmist rhetoric aside, it was a familiar tale: Not about the end of reading, but about New York real estate — inexorably rising rents and the few businesses that can afford them. It’s a challenging landscape for anybody, but probably especially challenging for bookstores after all. The same Department of Labor database the Times cited, showing a nearly 30 percent decline in Manhattan bookstores between 2000 and 2012, also found Brooklyn actually gaining a bookstore (from 50 to 51) in the same period. Look closely at a few of those — as well as Manhattan’s hardiest survivors — and the city’s Darwinian, post-Bloomberg ecosystem begins to look less like a literary desert than a harsh but productive driver of bookstore evolution. Here’s how a few of the success stories have managed.

Browsing at McNally JacksonTina Fineberg/© The New York Times/Redux
Walk the line between indie and superstore. That gloomy Times story was pegged to Sarah McNally abandoning plans to open an Upper West Side outpost of McNally Jackson, her decade-old, large-for-an-indie shop in Nolita. But McNally will have you know that, first of all, her rent is already completely astronomical (though she won’t say what it is), and second, she’s doing just fine. She attributes more than $4 million in sales last year to an obvious factor: volume. “Instead of getting rid of shelf for display,” she says, “we’ve gotten rid of display space for shelf space.” So 65,000 books have been squeezed into 7,000 square feet (along with a café), while creative organizing keeps them compulsively browsable. “I always try to make a bookstore that on the surface is extremely welcoming to all types of readers,” she says, while conceding, with a sly mock apology, that she sometimes neglects big new books: “You won’t find a lot of cheerleading for the frontlist, for which I’m sorry to the publishing industry.” In the fall, McNally will indeed open a new outpost — in Williamsburg. —Boris Kachka

The shelves at Greenlight
Chase philanthropic support. Brooklyn’s most notable new arrival — call it the 51st store — is Greenlight Books. Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, a former events coordinator for McNally Jackson, decided to open her own bookstore in the teeth of the 2008 crash, which hit publishing particularly hard. But her plan won a Brooklyn business contest worth $15,000, just as the Fort Greene Association revealed the results of a local survey: The No. 1 service residents most sorely lacked was a bookstore. The trade group contacted Bagnulo — already in talks with her current partner, Rebecca Fitting, a sales rep at Random House, who was ready to kick in $50,000. They held a gathering at BAM (Colson Whitehead and Jhumpa Lahiri showed up) to solicit community loans, which eventually added another $75,000. Then they landed $150,000 from the World Trade Center Small Business Recovery Fund. They also got a rent break on prime Fulton Street — $5,250 for 2,000 square feet, soon to hit the near-market rate of $7,500. The annual double-digit growth since comes down to curation, engagement, and location. Greenlight became an official merchandise vendor to nearby BAM, which led to a more aggressive strategy of pursuing offsite sales. They’ve organized a new reading series at St. Joseph's College, which hosted Gary Shteyngart in January and will soon feature best sellers Elisabeth Gilbert and Khaled Hosseini. They’ve even hired someone specifically to handle offsite events — 3 percent of the take as of last fall, but a growing part of the business in a city without a lot of square footage to spare. —B.K.

Powerhouse's ample digsCourtesy of Powerhouse Books
Forget books, sell the space. A recent ad for Verizon Fios features two laptops competing for bandwidth in what looks like a Bushwick loft that crashed into an Apple store. It’s actually PowerHouse Arena: a 5,000-square-foot “laboratory for creative thought,” exhibition hall, party space, shoot location, and, oh right, bookstore. “We don’t have a lot of giant, traditional diversity,” says owner Daniel Power, referring to the store’s rather limited stock. “We’re just very careful in what we select.” His art-publishing house, PowerHouse Books, occupies another 5,000 square feet of mezzanine, and at first the store sold mostly the books they themselves published. But now 60 percent of their space (and 95 percent of book sales) is given over to others, including better-known literary fare. There are no shelves, just tables, the better to accommodate large-scale events (the top corporate rate is $8,000 a night). Rent for the combined 10,000 square feet is $22,000 a month, well below what you’d pay anywhere else in bougie Brooklyn, and PowerHouse can make it back with just one major commercial shoot — like that Fios ad, or a Japanese-language Sarah Jessica Parker spot for Coca-Cola Lite. The store represents less than half of PowerHouse’s total business, which is a good thing, because since the Arena opened in 2006, the best it’s done is break even. But last year it broke even for the first time on book sales alone — though those photo shoots and events certainly helped. —B.K.

Come in and browseShanna Ravindra
Hang on until the nearby Barnes & Noble closes. At Three Lives, Toby Cox sells between 500 to 1000 books a week with the help of one full-time employee, four part-time employees and two “booksellers emeriti,” that is, former employees who still moonlight for fun. The West Village bookstore, on the corner of West 10th in a former grocery story, runs on a modest profit — enough to pay his bills, meet his payroll, and keep stock current but not much more. The tattered awning is still tattered. The tin ceiling dilapidated. “But that’s what the regulars like,” Cox says.

The early years of the great recession “were hard years,” he continues. “We cut back the hours of staff, cut down on our stock and just waited for it go get better.” But at the beginning of 2013, Barnes& Noble, the megalithic bookstore that occupied a corner a few blocks east, abruptly closed. “Suddenly,” said Cox, “people realized we were here.” The immediate uptick in business “was noticeable. I never thought of Barnes & Noble as a competitor. I didn’t think our customers overlapped. But after they closed, I realized they had been taking our customers after all.”

At 600 square feet, Three Lives is about the size of the test prep section at a big box bookstore, but the layout is streamlined for sales. The front half is where new releases dwell, like charcuterie. (“I could pay a month’s rent on The Goldfinch alone,” he says). Any time a book is bought, the entire shelf must be reordered, since no books of the same color spine may be adjacent, lest they appear erroneously as a set.  “It’s a bit of an obsession, I guess,” Cox says, replacing a stack of Teju Cole’s canary-yellow novel Open City with Sebastian Barry’s burnt-ochre-hued A Long Long Way next to David Peace’s shocking yellow-covered The Damned UTD. “The yellows were too similar,” he says when pressed, “it just didn’t look right.” — Joshua David Stein

Get out from under your debt. Park Slope’s Community Bookstore is Brooklyn’s oldest continually operating bookseller, founded in 1971 by Susan Scioli. She still owns the building and lives upstairs, but in 2001 she sold the store to her manager — who by 2009 was barely managing. When Ezra Goldstein and Stephanie Valdez took over the store the following year, they inherited a ratty rug, an unused fridge, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and a virtual menagerie. The one thing Goldstein and Valdez didn’t inherit was a decent number of books. “The stock was terrible,” Valdez says. “The kids section was pretty much empty.” Publishers wouldn’t even sell them books directly that first year because the store’s credit was too bad. The turnaround began around Christmas 2010, after Goldstein took out $10,000 in savings, bought up stock from distributors, and filled the store with books customers had long been requesting. Within a year, they’d broken even, and their annual sales have since doubled, breaking $1 million last year. They gambled that, despite a massive Barnes & Noble nearby, there was still demand for kids’ books; now it’s more than 30 percent of the stock.

They held a grand 40th anniversary party in a church across the street, starring locals like Paul Auster and Jonathan Safran Foer. It was a coming-out party for a store many neighbors had written off. “It takes a very long time to restore a reputation,” says Goldstein. A lingering problem is the high rent on Seventh Avenue. Theirs will rise to $9,500 in September — more than triple what PowerHouse pays per square foot. In two years, the lease will be up. “It’s essentially time to start panicking,” says Valdez, before correcting herself. “Preparing.” And yet, they recently bought out a used bookstore in Windsor Terrace from an owner in similarly dire straits. “We couldn’t help ourselves.” —B.K.

... and real estateJonathan Bourland
Buy the building. BookCourt’s owners Henry Zook and Mary Gannett can tell you exactly why the Cobble Hill mainstay has been around since 1981 and managed to expand just as the economy crashed: They bought their building, 163 Court Street, in 1984, for $160,000. So while other stores struggle with leases that seem to rise with every affluent (usually book-loving) new arrival to the neighborhood, BookCourt actually benefits by collecting rent from upstairs. In the mid-'90s, with their mortgage fully paid off, they also bought 161 Court* from their neighbor, a florist who was relocating to Florida. They’d already converted 163’s dirt-floor basement into another store level, but that cramped addition was nothing like today’s space. The original 800-foot store is now a warm and well-stocked vestibule; the front of the old flower shop is a welcoming kids’ area; and in back, where the florist’s dilapidated greenhouse once sat, there’s now a large skylit atrium for readings, lined with enough books alone to dwarf BookCourt’s original selection. Bolstered by some new funding, Zook and Gannett finally began renovating the greenhouse in 2006. Now there are dedicated sections for most of Brooklyn’s favorite subgenres, from graphic novels to the paperback NYRB Classics. Asked how business has been, Gannett evinces the cautious optimism with which the couple has always handled growth. “Let me tell you, it’s very tough,” she says. “I think we were probably more profitable early on, ironically.” But she’s never regretted the expansions, which have raised their profile and their size in every way. Besides, she says, it was never really about the money. “This is not a profitable industry. There’s no money in this.” —B.K.


* This item has been corrected throughout.

from: NY Magazine

Friday, April 25, 2014

Whare Are the People of Color in Children's Books?

by: Walter Dean Myers

Of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people, according to a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin.

Reading came early to me, but I didn’t think of the words as anything special. I don’t think my stepmom thought of what she was doing as more than spending time with me in our small Harlem apartment. From my comfortable perch on her lap I watched as she moved her finger slowly across the page. She probably read at about the third grade level, but that was good enough for the True Romance magazines she read. I didn’t understand what the stories were about, what “bosom” meant or how someone’s heart could be “broken.” To me it was just the comfort of leaning against Mama and imagining the characters and what they were doing.


from: NY Times

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Library Care Packages: CDs, Freshly Picked | Music Matters

by: Steve Kemple

What if those online music services that collect your tastes and recommend new jams were headquartered right down the road? And what if they were run by friendly folks actively working to wow you with care packages for your ears that you could drop by and pick up? Okay, so the “care packages for your ears” are compact discs. And the Internet isn’t serving them up—the library is.

CD of the Month Club

Some would tell you that next to commercial streaming music services like ­Spotify and Rdio, libraries’ aging compact disc collections are fossils. So why do we even bother to keep our music collections? Why not just cede the victory to our digital overlords and call it a day?
ljx140401webMusicb1 Library Care Packages: CDs, Freshly Picked | Music Matters

A lot of things justify maintaining and promoting physical music collections. One of my favorites is a service we’ve developed at the Cincinnati public library. The CD of the Month Club builds on the premise of music discovery services such as Pandora and was, in no small part, inspired by LJ 2012 Movers & Shakers Matthew Moyer and Andrew Coulon’s stellar Personalized Playlists program at the Jacksonville Public Library (ow.ly/uk8Ad). New club members fill out a form (either on paper or online at ow.ly/uk8qm) and answer a few questions about the kinds of music they typically enjoy. Each month, they’ll receive a mystery CD, chosen specifically for them by a team of music-loving library staff and shipped to their favorite branch. Before sending the selections we place a slip in the front of the jewel case, sometimes with a personal note. When the discs are ready to be picked up, patrons are notified just as with other holds.

We invite members to determine the adventurousness of their selections on a scale between zero and five (zero being, “don’t bother sending me something I’ve never heard before” and five being, “I dare you to blow my mind”). In just over a year, our club has grown to nearly 700 members, and we recently sailed past our 4,000th personal CD recommendation.

Behind the scenes

The process we follow in making our choices isn’t all that complex. We create Word documents for members that include their preferences and a history of our past selections for them, as well as any feedback they’ve provided. The profiles are organized and linked to a spreadsheet on which we also keep track of statistics and manage workflow. We’re transitioning to a newly created database that will give members the ability to view and edit their own profiles as well as rate and review each CD they receive.

The real fun is picking the CDs. Presumably most people join the club because they want to be exposed to new things, so we work with their preferences to begin. The human element is what sets our program apart from algorithm-driven services. We make educated guesses, using intuition (and a few resources I’ll discuss below) to help guide members to new (or old) musical territory. Some members are less interested in being challenged than others, and that’s more than okay.

Blowing their minds

More members than not dare us to blow their minds. But what does that mean? Since we don’t want to scare anyone away, it’s crucial to consider each member’s listening experience. We probably won’t send Wolf Eyes to a member whose favorite bands are Maroon 5 and Adele, even if they’ve dared us to blow their mind. Instead, we might start with something relatively safe, like Broken Bells or Neko Case, then after a few months send something slightly outside their comfort zone. We want to demonstrate that we understand their interests before we throw John Coltrane’s Ascension at them. Every CD we recommend is an opportunity to ­further our relationship with that person. And then blow their mind.

Do it yourself

So you want to start a CD of the Month Club at your library, but you aren’t feeling confident about choosing music for strangers. Don’t worry: if you enjoy music, then you have what it takes. There’s a wealth of advice in back issues of this column. Start with Moyer’s “Music Advisory” (ow.ly/ulz0K) and Brian Morell’s “Discovery Without Algorithms” (ow.ly/ulz6L). I’ve also developed a program-in-a-box (ow.ly/uk996) that any library is welcome to use.

Gnoosic’s Music Map (music-map.com) plots similar artists in spatial proximity. Sometimes the comparisons are a bit off, but it’s usually a great starting point. AllMusic (allmusic.com) is also excellent; in addition to suggesting comparable artists it includes categories for “influenced by,” “followed by,” “associated with,” and “collaborated with.” AllMusic also features terrific guides to genres, highlighting key artists, albums, and songs in each, plus tons of reviews and biographical information.

What we get from it

So many great, unexpected things have happened as a result of this program. Members visit the library just to talk about music, or they’ll email to tell me they just placed a hold on every other CD by the artist or composer we recommended. Sometimes they’ll even counter with their own recommendations for me! The CD of the Month Club allows us to shine a spotlight on less-trafficked corners of our amazing music collection. I’m excited beyond words about how far this project has come in such a short time. Suffice it to say, my mind is blown.

from: Library Journal

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

5 Things That People Don’t Realize their Librarians Do

by: Rebecca Tischler

Many people still have the stereotypical image of a librarian stuck in their head: an older kind of frumpy woman wearing glasses on a chain, her hair up in a bun, shushing people with one hand while stamping books with the other. I was even told by most of my classmates in Jr. High that I was going to be a librarian because I liked to read, and I was very quiet during those years. I still love to read, but since I’m much more comfortable with myself, I don’t know if people would still say that I look like a librarian. Ironically, I did become a librarian, but for completely different reasons.

As a librarian, we help to teach people how to become self-sufficient on the computer, how to find the answer to patron’s questions (no offence Google, but while you may come back with a million answers, we librarians come back with the right answer), develop graphic designs for advertisement, act as a social media managers, handle reader’s advisory, teach information literacy classes, act as storytellers, teach children. We wear many many caps.

And here are five things that you may have been unaware that librarians do (just a few of their caps), or that libraries offer.

1. Librarians are teachers. Many libraries have computer classes: which can include teaching a room full of people how to use Microsoft Office, how to use the internet safely, how to set up accounts and stay safe on social media, or how to use photo manipulation programs. Some libraries even teach computer programming classes.

2. Librarians are tech savvy. Whatever librarians are teaching, or when we have to help a patron troubleshoot their own technology, we have to be computer and technologically literate in order to help. We have to know the basics of computer technology, at the very least. Most times, however, we know more.

3. Librarians are advertisers. Libraries mostly manage their own public relations and advertise their own services and events. They write the press releases, network and make connections, as well as create their own logos and graphic design.

4. Librarians are event planners. Libraries have dozens of events every year, and the staff has to create a budgets and event plans, bring in volunteers or paid presenters. They plan the activities, the topic, the refreshments… everything. Sometimes, the librarian is also the presenter, if the librarian’s outside hobbies happen to be of use.

5. Librarians are researchers. Librarians not only know how to organize and find information. We know how to collate and analyze information. We see the patterns and can extract information from it. For example, have you ever gone to the library looking for the next book that you would love, and asked one of the librarians what they would recommend? If so, you were probably asked about what type of books you liked, if you have favorite authors, of those favorite books or authors, what was it that drew you in (location, characters, humor…), etc. These were all questions that help the librarian gather information about analyze your taste in books to hopefully provide you with your next favorite read.

With just those 5 things, librarians have to learn graphic design, communications, how to interview, public relations, writing, computer literacy and information literacy. And yet, there is so much more to librarianship that even just the 5 items discussed above. This in no way means that the librarians are ready to march into those other professions fully prepared, but we do have to study and learn multiple professions so that we can act as librarians. Librarianship is much more than reading books, and organizing them. Libraries provide classed, events, public space, access to computers and technology.


Libraries are more than just free bookstores.

from: INALJ

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Mourning Local Bookstores

by: Dan Wagstaff

Writing for the New York Times, Julie Bosman recently looked at how surging rents are forcing bookstores from Manhattan:
The closings have alarmed preservationists, publishers and authors, who said the fading away of bookstores amounted to a crisis that called for intervention from the newly minted mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, who has vowed to offer greater support to small businesses.

[Author Robert] Caro said in an interview that he is heartbroken by the loss of bookstores from Manhattan, calling it “a profoundly significant and depressing indication of where our culture is.”

“How can Manhattan be a cultural or literary center of the world when the number of bookstores has become so insignificant?” he asked. “You really say, has nobody in city government ever considered this and what can be done about it?”
There has, of course, been a similar trend in Toronto with the Cookbook store, the Annex location of Book City, and the Bloor West Village Chapters all closing (or about to) in recent months.

On a happier note though, Bosman notes that some stores are thriving by locating to other, more affordable neighbourhoods in New York (and beyond):
just as many writers have fled to Brooklyn or Queens in search of more affordable housing, some bookstore owners have followed. Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene opened in 2009 to robust business and year-over-year increases in sales.

In December, Christine Onorati, the co-owner of Word bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, opened a second store in Jersey City. Ms. Onorati said she never looked seriously at Manhattan because the rents were so unaffordable…

…After spending years scouring Manhattan for a second location, Ms. McNally of McNally Jackson abandoned her search. At the urging of a former employee, she began looking in Brooklyn and settled on Williamsburg, where she found a “magnificent,” loftlike space with a 20-foot ceiling.
I hope this will be true of Toronto too even though it is much smaller than New York (New York has more than twice the population of Toronto). But here, despite some well-defined neighbourhoods, bookstores seem to have been slow to follow their customers (and their families) to more affordable areas of the city. My neighbourhood, where I’ve lived for 8 years, is filling up with young families and yet many store fronts remain stubbornly empty. And while I consider myself lucky to still have a bookstore, Book City’s Danforth location, only four subway stops away, it feel like a very different neighbourhood. I would love to be able to walk to a bookstore with my kids, or stop in to browse on my way home.

Perhaps the bookstores further afield, in communities like Burlington and Hamilton, are doing better? I hope so.

Still, I will leave the final word to Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch, who has written a sharp response to the New York Times article for  The New Yorker:

Those of us who cherish our local bookstores do so not simply because they are convenient—how great to be able to run out for milk and also pick up the new Karl Ove Knausgaard!—but also because we feel a duty to support them, because we believe in their mission. When books can be bought so cheaply online, or at one of the dwindling number of discount retailers, paying more to shop at a local bookstore feels virtuous, like buying locally sourced organic vegetables, or checking to see if a T-shirt is made in the U.S.A. It can be gratifying to the point of smugness to feel that one is being pluralistic, liberal, and humane; shopping at an independent bookstore may be one of the diminishing opportunities to experience that feeling in first-class New York City. Still, when I consider the vanished bookstores of Manhattan, I mourn not just their passing but the loss of a certain kind of book-buying innocence—a time when where one bought a book did not constitute a political statement, and reading it did not feel like participating in a requiem.
from: Casual Optimist

Monday, April 21, 2014

Star authors take to the road to counter fall in bookshop sales

In a digital age, publishers find innovative ways to bring readers books they'll 'fall in love with'
by: Jennifer Rankin

Authors on rock star-style tours, animations of famous fictional characters, merchandise based on children's stories – all these are now in the armoury of Britain's biggest publisher as it fights back against the decline of the high-street bookseller.

Penguin Random House UK has sold more than 10,000 tickets for a gig-style reading tour by the writer Caitlin Moran, and has sold a cartoon version of Peter Rabbit to 15 countries, with potentially lucrative tie-ins with toymakers and chocolatiers, as one of the most venerable names in publishing moves into territory which was once the preserve of film companies.

Tom Weldon,UK chief executive of Penguin Random House, said that, as traditional ways of reaching book-buyers disappear, the company is looking to build a closer relationship with readers, to tell them about "books they might fall in love with".

"It is a sad fact of life that there are fewer physical bookshops than there were. And traditional media is declining – including, sadly, newspaper books pages," said Weldon.

As the books world moves from "a browse-and-display model to one of online search and recommendation", publishers are having to adapt to catch readers' attention, he said, especially when "there is so much entertainment choice out there".

Speaking in his first national newspaper interview since Penguin and Random House completed a merger last July that brought 15,000 authors under one roof, Weldon said his industry had responded better to digital disruption than either film or television, which had struggled to control intellectual property rights. "The challenge isn't digital; it's how you tell people about the next great book. Because anyone can get published now, but how do you capture the readers' attention?"

The company would also be going into "merchandise and branding like never before", using children's favourites such as Raymond Briggs's Snowman and Topsy and Tim – and would carry out extensive market research to identify readers' tastes.

Richard Mollet, chief executive of the Publishers Association, added that the whole industry was looking at innovations, including new kinds of content, such as "strange amalgams of books and games and films". Such changes did not "stem from a position of weakness" but one of strength, he said. The industry had a history of pioneering developments, such as the cheap paperback.

"Publishers have always been innovating and they are innovating well in the digital world. It is a very exciting response to what is possible," said Mollet.

However, a recent survey from Booktrust, the UK charity that encourages people to engage with books, showed that more than 60% of 18- to 30-year-olds prefer DVDs to books. The scale of the challenge is underscored by the fact that the games industry will for the first time have a stand at the London Book Fair, which starts on 8 April.

Jo Twist, of the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment, said the £3bn games industry was complementary to traditional publishing and brought "an innovative and creative edge to stories" to suit a growing population of people who love playing.

However, Peter McCarthy, a New York-based publishing analyst, who has worked at Penguin and Random House, said publishers should think carefully before straying too far beyond printed books. "I am waiting to see how it really gains traction," he said. "I am not a dinosaur, but I do harken back to the age of the CD-Rom."

But even highly innovative CD-Roms and extended ebooks had "not broken the land-speed record" and publishers can still "do better with any mass-market paperback than an app", said McCarthy.

from: Guardian

Friday, April 18, 2014

Tussle Erupts Over Libraries In Northern Colorado

by: Donna Bryson

DENVER (AP) — Libraries are sedate and quiet — nothing like a tussle over control of a library system that has erupted in northern Colorado.

This week, elected leaders from five Weld County towns and from the county commission agreed to move ahead with an effort to oust the entire High Plains Library District Board, which some librarians in rural parts of the county accuse of trying to take over their libraries. A sixth member of the tax district, the city of Greeley, has not joined the campaign.

The district and its independent libraries partners have been sharing resources since 1985, when they banded together to survive in the face of cuts in federal funding that had supported a range of local services. Issues that have been rankling for decades may seem minor — such as who should decide how many books can be checked out at a time, or how much to charge a library patron who wants to use the copying machine. But Don Warden, who helped draft the library district’s rules when he was Weld County director of finance in the 1980s, said the local library is “part of the identity of their community” for many in rural Colorado.

“It’s a sensitive issue that goes beyond libraries,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday. “They want to maintain control.”

The library tussle is part of a larger reaction to a demographic shift from rural to urban. Last year, Weld County elected officials were the first to raise a secession question. Weld was among the six counties where voters rejected breaking away to form a rural 51st state in November. Five counties passed secession measures, seen as messages from prairie towns to urban centers that they see as arrogant and aloof.

Now, the six members of the High Plains Library District Board, who deny any takeover intentions, are getting the message.

Kelli Johnson, spokeswoman for the embattled board, told AP she’s heard the charges the board was attempting a takeover of local libraries when district officials approached their partners across Weld County to talk about how to implement a centralized computer system and other changes aimed at improving efficiency. It underlined a sense felt for years that rules were unclear on how the district board and libraries with their own boards are to work together, she said.

Johnson said the board sought input on operational matters. The board includes members who have worked for libraries in the region for years and are committed to cooperation and serving all patrons, she said.

But Jerry Krois, library director in Eaton, one of the communities pushing to oust the board, told AP he was left feeling he was “not being listened to, not being respected at all by the board.”

In 1985, six municipalities, a Weld County school district and Weld County formed what would become the High Plains Library District Board. Local libraries get two-thirds of the funds generated in their service areas by mill levies, and the rest goes to a district fund for shared services, such as book mobiles and an inter-library loan system. The district serves more than 200,000 residents in Weld and parts of some neighboring counties. Over the years, the district has opened branch libraries in growing communities that did not have their own libraries in 1985.

Over the next month — if they are not slowed by a court injunction the district board has said it will pursue — community leaders in the district will be voting to ratify the board members’ ouster and name elected officials such as mayors in their place.

Warden, who is semi-retired and now working as an interim Weld County finance director, said he worries a protracted legal battle is ahead. “That’s probably the heartbreak of the whole thing,” he said.


Thursday, April 17, 2014

The Library Welcomes Its First Innovator in Residence

Expert Derek Quenneville introduces patrons to 3D printing at the Toronto Reference Library.
by: Megan Marrelli

Derek Quenneville shows guests how to use the Makerbot 3D scanner at the Toronto 3D Printers MeetUp in March (Photo by Toronto Public Library).
If you don’t know how 3D printing works, you’re not alone. Derek Quenneville, a Toronto-based expert, says it’s kind of like a glue gun. Controlled by a computer. Except the glue is plastic. And the plastic happens to build up one layer on top of another.
“The mechanics of it are quite simple,” he says.
Quenneville is well known in the world of 3D printing and fabrication art. He creates his own projects, runs Toronto’s 3D Printer MeetUps, and now he’s also a Toronto Public Library guinea pig: Quenneville is its first official Innovator in Residence thanks to a new six-week program launched with the TPL’s Digital Innovation Hub.
Quenneville’s duties as resident innovator involve running 17 3D-printing sessions—ranging from drop-in Q&As to formally led classes—over the course of six weeks.
Now in his fourth week, Quenneville says turnout has been amazing.
3D printing “kind of chose itself” as the first medium for the residency, says TPL’s Ab Velasco. “Out of all the technology we offer, 3D printing is the one that’s considered really cool, cutting edge.”
TPL offered 300 spots for a 3D-printing certification course, which sold out in three days.
Quenneville has been pleasantly surprised by the number of people coming to his classes. “A lot of people who are not computer savvy at all are totally happy to be playing with the software,” he says. “I guess it makes sense, because the library is a safe space to learn.”
The crowd is also older than he’d expected—many Torontonians in their fifties and sixties are looking to learn about 3D printing.
He says—get ready for this—there’s nothing he dislikes about his job. “Just seeing people’s faces light up when they look at something that was in their brain, and half an hour later they’re holding it in their hands—it’s an incredible thing to see,” he says.
The Digital Innovation Hub is aiming to host an innovator twice a year. Velasco says that they’re currently leaning toward someone working in film; however, future innovators could specialize in “anything from web design to graphic design to electronics and computer programming.”
Quenneville’s residency will wrap up on May 2 with a closing party, but you still have time to drop by and ask him all your questions about the creative and practical applications of 3D printing.
from: Torontoist

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

The Future For Public Libraries: Specialized Features Not Starbucks

by: Michael Lierberman

South Korea libraries

My head is still spinning from Panos Mourdoukoutas’ post at Forbes last week suggesting that there should be a Starbucks in every local library. Granted it appeared in Forbes and they slant corporate but it might just be the most near-sighted, wackiest story I have read in some time.

Of course he starts out proclaiming his love for his local library but before it’s over he says “Simply put, Starbucks and local libraries supplement each other nicely—they are both “third places” with different rules of conduct, catering to different community segments. That’s a good reason to have a Starbucks store in every library.”

Why not put a jail in every library for it also has “different rules of conduct, catering to different community segments.”  They would compliment each other nicely by providing literacy services and job training to inmates while scaring the pants off the kids so they won’t go astray of the law.

Thankfully, I recently ran across a story at the Korea Joonang Daily that alerted me to some of the awesome features that South Korea is adding to its public libraries.


Over half of all the public libraries in Gyeonggi, a city northwest of Seoul “offer some sort of specialized features” with close to 100 “dedicated to some other function than book lending or reading”

south korea libraries 1

“The main purpose of specialized libraries is to encourage a “reading culture,” which these days is losing the public’s interest. They encourage people to read books and enjoy cultural institutions at the same time.”

“Adding cultural elements to public libraries meets the demand,” said Cho Hyun-yang, professor of library and information science at Kyonggi University. “The spread of specialized libraries plays a positive role by increasing citizens’ satisfaction with life.”


Oh, and the government covered all the costs of constructing these specialized libraries.

from: Seattlepi

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The great writers inspired behind bars

by: Jane Ciabattari

Legend has it that Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece Don Quixote was conceived and at least partially written in prison – “where every discomfort has its place and every mournful sound makes its home,” according to its opening lines..

Stripped of freedom and with his vision acutely attuned to the ironies of his circumstances, Cervantes broke through the literary conventions of his time. Can prison be a muse? It hardly seems desirable, when freedom is the condition most of us would choose. Yet history shows that lasting work can be inspired by the horrors and deprivations of incarceration. Authors with the intellectual grit to endure have been rewarded with exceptional insights into human behaviour and psychology. The tension between freedom and captivity has led to unexpected creative breakthroughs.

Don Quixote contains “practically every imaginative technique and device used by subsequent fiction writers to engage their readers and construct their works,” writes Edith Grossman in the preface to her 2003 translation. Cervantes anticipates realism, modernism, post-modernism, the frame story, the mixing of genres, and more, all while maintaining that ironic wit.  His device of characters commenting upon the text in which they appear is centuries ahead of its time.

Cervantes’ masterpiece seems to have been inspired by the physical and psychological pressures of confinement, linking the first modern novel with the prison experience. And Don Quixote has endured, interpreted by critics from myriad angles, shaping the work of scores of writers in succeeding generations.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky credits Don Quixote as a precursor to his portrait of a positively good man, the naive epileptic  Prince Myshkin in The Idiot. “Of the good figures in Christian literature, the most complete is that of Don Quixote,” he noted in 1868 while working on the novel. “But he is good only because at the same time he is ridiculous.”  Prince Myshkin, whose goodness blinds him to the subtleties of deceit and betrayal, is unable to function in society.  Like Cervantes, Dostoyevsky presents the state of goodness as verging on madness.

Dostoyevsky, too, was profoundly changed by his prison experience. He had already published his first novel, Poor Folk, when he was arrested in 1849 for involvement with a group of leftist St Petersburg intellectuals. After months in prison, he was sentenced to death, carted with others in his group to Semyonovsky Square and prepared for the firing squad. At the last minute the Tsar stayed his execution but  Dostoyevsky spent four years of hard labour in the Siberian gulag, where his educated status inflamed other inmates. “They are a coarse, irritated, and embittered lot,” he wrote to his brother. “Their hatred for the gentry passes all limits.”

Dreams of freedom

Dostoyevsky’s prison experience ushered in an awareness of the irrational and of a sense of communal suffering. His best novels, including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, are gems of psychological insight. James Joyce wrote that Dostoyevsky “created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch.” Mikhail Bakhtin identified the ‘polyphonic’ qualities of Dostoyevsky’s work, which expanded the novel to include many conflicting voices rather than a single vision.

His 1861 novel From the House of the Dead, or Prison Life in Siberia, written as fiction from the point of view of a man who has killed his wife, documents his own prison experience. “Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to a man who is deprived of freedom,” he writes. He explains the prison trade in vodka and tobacco, the compulsion to steal.  His fictional inmate dreams of freedom relentlessly, as did its author.

This yearning for freedom while enduring the hardship of prison is a thread through Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s literary lifework, which began during his eight years in Soviet labour camps. He was arrested in 1945 for making disparaging remarks about Stalin in a letter.  After finishing his sentence in 1955, he was exiled to southern Kazakhstan. In solitude, beset by harrowing memories, he composed his first novel, not expecting it to ever be published.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, set during one bitterly cold day in a Siberian labour camp in 1951, was published in 1962, nine years after Stalin’s death, to global acclaim.  It was the first literary work to expose the degradations of the Soviet regime’s gulags.

Solzhenitsyn wrote a series of novels, including The Cancer Ward, in which he asked, “A man dies from a tumour, so how can a country survive with growths like labour camps and exiles?” His masterwork The Gulag Archipelago, completed in 1968, is a massive three-volume indictment of the regime’s forced labour camps. Subtitled An Experiment in Literary Investigation, it moves in excruciating detail through the process of interrogation, transportation, imprisonment and aftermath, including the massacre of inmates.

Solzhenitsyn drew on his own experience, hundreds of interviews and historic documents. He distilled them into a shattering narrative that reveals the inner workings of a murderous state within a state. His polyphonic form was noted in the citation when Solzhenitsyn won the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature: “each person becomes the chief character whenever the action concerns him. This is not just a technique, it is a creed. The narrative focuses on the only human element in existence, the human individual, with equal status among equals, one destiny among millions and a million destinies in one. This is the whole of humanism in a nutshell, for the kernel is love of mankind.”

Clear vision

Examining the relationship of the individual to the state and the question of goodness was also a theme of the 19th-Century American political thinker Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was deeply affected by the night he spent in prison for refusing to pay a poll tax.   “I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived,” he wrote.

This episode inspired his 1848 speech Resistance to Civil Government, later published as Civil Disobedience.  “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority,” he wrote, “… but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.” The insights Thoreau developed from witnessing first-hand the power of the state to jail citizens, had far-ranging consequences.

His thinking about the obligation of the individual to question the actions of the State influenced generations of future thinkers from Leo Tolstoy to Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.  King’s 1963  Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he noted, “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here,” is a classic document in the civil-rights movement. King credited Thoreau with convincing him that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as co-operation with good. "No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau,” King wrote. “As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest."


It could be argued that Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn and Thoreau might not have written so brilliantly without being inspired by prison. Confinement is onerous, but there can be redeeming aspects.  As these writers, and countless others have shown, prison, in tandem with the spacious human imagination and the dream of freedom, can inspire literary masterpieces.

from: BBC

Monday, April 14, 2014

Books Behind Bars: A Volunteer-run Prison Library Service in Winnipeg, Manitoba

by: Kim Parry
  • In Brief: Beginning the summer of 2012, a group Canadian librarians in Winnipeg came together to discuss the lack of library services in the prison system in the province of Manitoba. The newly formed Prison Library Committee started a weekly drop-in library service at the Winnipeg Remand Centre (WRC) located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This article will explore the importance of prison library services in the current context of prisons in Canada through our grassroots voluntary prison library service.

    Introduction

    As I sit down to write this article my mind floats back to a conference I recently attended on the topic of literacy and incarcerated youth. The focus was on increasing awareness of low literacy levels among “at-risk youth” in Canada and what changes would support these youth in developing literacy skills. A panel of people in executive positions in justice and non-profit organizations lamented the lack of communication between organizations, the lack of funding, the startling numbers of Aboriginal and new immigrant youth being incarcerated in Canada, and the enormous costs. While I left that panel without any solutions, it did provide me with insight into the types of discussions that are happening at high levels.
    What is being talked about by many people is the need for change in the Canadian justice system.  The prison library project explained in this article is not an answer to these big questions.  It is simply a response to the fact that there was no library service in a prison located in downtown Winnipeg. This article will explore our grassroots prison library project and touch on some of the complex issues surrounding working with people who are serving time.

    Prison Libraries in Canada

    I would like to provide some context around the prison system in Canada and who is being incarcerated in our society. Statistics from the Office of the Correctional Investigator state that a third of inmates have a need for mental health treatment and three out of four have substance abuse issues. According to the report by Sapers, Aboriginal people make up 22% of the federal prison population but make up only about 4% of the general population. Aboriginal women make up 33.6% of federally sentenced women (Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2013). In addition, the number of Aboriginal people in Canadian federal prisons has gone up by more than 40% over the last 10 years, are over-represented in solitary confinement, and are kept behind bars for longer periods than non-Aboriginal inmates (2013). An inquiry into this unjust situation was conducted in 1999 (led by Justice Murray Sinclair) but 15 years later the number of Aboriginal people in prison has continued to increase, suggesting that the structural racism of the system has not changed.
    In 2001, a national survey of libraries in federal prisons was undertaken by Ann Curry of University of British Columbia and colleagues Kris Wolf, Sandra Boutilier, and Helen Chan. The survey found that overall, prison libraries were meeting the needs of people in prison, however there was a great deal of variation among the sample and all of the libraries could use more resources and funding (2003). Since this survey, funding for libraries and for the staff to run them has been slashed. Despite the common perception that prisons have fully functioning libraries, many in Canada do not.
    Many prisons do have a room with books in it or a small collection of books but do not have an information professional working there. This is often due to budget cuts or assigning the library work to a teacher who is already working in the institution. There is a directive by Correctional Services of Canada for the institution to provide library services which reflect the services provided in the community including computer resources (2007). In the news we hear of prison libraries closing and anecdotes from other librarians that demonstrate that this directive is not being adhered to.
    When our committee first approached the Remand Centre in Winnipeg, there was no library in the building and just a few copies of books floating around brought in by prison staff members and from outside prisoner support organizations such as John Howard Society and Elizabeth Fry Society.

    Winnipeg Remand Centre Open Library Project

    Every day on my way to work in a downtown public library I walk by the Winnipeg Remand Centre. Every day thousands of downtown workers pass by the Remand. It is a tall building with dark windows which reflect the sky. Many of us don’t think about the hundreds of people inside.
    The Remand Centre is a maximum security prison built in 1992 to hold approximately 290 people. The Remand has been consistently over-capacity for year and the average number of people serving time there has risen from 329 in 2005 to 406 in 2012 (CBC, 2012). This increase in numbers is disturbing. Overcrowding is a real issue for those who are incarcerated. Effective library services within this institution would provide some distractions from the very difficult situation people are being forced to live in. A small but eager group of librarians and library technicians (public, academic and special) decided not to ignore those people in the Remand.
    For two hours every Saturday evening we turn the room usually reserved for people to meet with their lawyers into an ‘open library.’ We open up two cupboards full of books organized by genre and bring in a large cupboard on wheels which is also stocked with books. We pull out a sign that says “Welcome to the WRC Library,” tape it up on the wall, and rearrange tables and chairs. We use the tables to create book displays depending on what books are in stock.
    Once we are all set up, we let the guard know they can bring groups down. The Remand divides people into men’s and women’s units and then into units based on gang affiliation to keep tensions lower. The unit the guards refer to as ‘trustees’ are those who get the privileges of doing work such as helping prepare meals, do laundry, and clean. We never see those who are in solitary but sometimes are asked to send a book or two up to them. The different groups cycle down based on a schedule. Sometimes the guards will come back and tell us no one feels like coming or there are family visits happening at the same time. Sometimes we will get up to 4 groups of 10 people in a row-half an hour per group.
    When the patrons come into our open library they browse the displays, sit around and chat with us or each other, and choose three or four books each. We don’t track anything being taken—people can simply take the books with them. Even if they end up leaving or moving to a different institution, we tell them they can take the book if they aren’t finished with it. Otherwise, they can send it back to the library. It is a very basic service and has the primary goal of connecting readers with books they will enjoy. Within the grind of prison life this has the possibility to be a powerful connection.

    Collections

    Our collection is made up of items that were weeded from the public library’s collection, brand new or used books bought with donations from individuals and a small grant from the Manitoba Library Association, and books donated by supportive community members. Led by a dedicated collection development volunteer who is an experienced public librarian, we come together to sort by genre and label the books with a series of coloured dots to represent popular fiction categories such as mystery, science fiction, and romance. We base our collection development on the requests of our patrons tempered with the restrictions placed on us by the Remand. We scour used book sales to find copies of In Search of April Raintree by Beatrice Culleton Mosionier, our most requested book. Biographies, mysteries, and thrillers are very popular with patrons, as are works relating to self-help and addiction. As librarians, we work to get these books into our patron’s hands and constantly bring in new books in good condition.
    One of the barriers prison librarians face is censorship. Longtime prison librarian and author Brenda Vogel terms collection development in prison libraries as a “collision with the absurd” (p. 42). There are many items which are not allowed into prisons and these restrictions are often based on antiquated ideas of what books those serving time “should” be reading. We have never been shown a guide to which books aren’t allowed past the Remand doors, but staff go through the books as they arrive in their weekly delivery. We base the collection on what we have been told during our orientation: there are no magazines allowed at Remand and no hardcovers. As a rule, books that fall into the true crime genre are not allowed, despite the fact that these books are often told from the perspective of victims of crime and may actually be insightful. Generally, our collection development volunteers follow a user-driven collection model. We take suggestions from our patrons at every open library and build off of these to create a collection that is appealing to them within this structured environment.
    Many of our patrons have a love for reading, some are looking to learn new skills, and some are just bored. Many of the members of the committee have a love for reading and have had that magical experience of the right book at the right time—that book that you can identify with and takes you away or allows you to more fully investigate your own life. This is what we seek to provide for inmates through our collection.

    Creating Space

    The purpose of this article is to describe the library service I and other volunteers have worked on. This project, however, cannot be taken out of the context of historical and contemporary colonial trauma collectively experienced by Aboriginal people in Canada and systemic racism and the myriad forms of resistance. The justice system, as was shown in the Aboriginal Justice Report and by many other prison activists, is working against Aboriginal and racialized people in Canada. This can be seen on a global level as well—justice is not blind.
    In the past year, we have started to use our two hour time slots for author talks and writing workshops, the first of which involved Niigaanwewidam Sinclair – a local Anishinaabe (Ojibway) academic and activist. For this event, Sinclair chose to read an excerpt from the book “Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water,” a collection of writings from Indigenous people across Manitoba. Over the course of an evening, the book was discussed with two groups of patrons, many of whom knew some of the contributors within the book, creating a personal connection within the context of the session. Sinclair made known to those in attendance that these stories were their stories—a potentially life changing thing to hear while incarcerated. For our patrons at the Remand, this brought a new and exciting dynamic to the open library experience, and because of the success of this session, we are looking to continue to host writers and speakers as we develop this project.
    Still, I am not tragic
    Not even in my addicted moments
    A needle hanging from the vein of my creased arm
    I was not tragic
    Even as I jump from a boat in a vain attempt to join my ancestors
    I am not tragic
    Even in my disconnection from song, from dance,
    I am not tragic
    Even in seeing you as privileged,
    As an occupier of my homeland in my homeless state
    Even as men abduct as I hitchhike along these new highways
    To disappear along this lonely colonial road
    I refuse to be tragic
    I have included an excerpt of Indigenous writer Lee Maracle’s Poem Blind Justice. I strongly encourage you to click through for the full piece. Maracle’s words point to the difficult relationship we can encounter as a volunteer in the prison system.  On a basic level, our committee opens a couple of cupboards filled with books and we wait for people to take them out and talk about the books with them. Prison librarian Brenda Vogel writes about the possibility to make a difference: “You are guaranteed to make a difference in the life of anyone who lives in a prison or jail by opening the door to a room filled with books or by distributing free reading material to someone sitting in a cell or lying on a bunk in a housing dorm” (Vogel, 175).  Niigaanwewidam Sinclair referred to our committee as a group of “brave librarians” who provide this library service in the prison. I appreciate this, as I think he meant it in the sense that we brave the often complicated and bureaucratic system in order to provide books to people who are seeking a connection, whether it is to a story or a conversation, or both.
    Being involved in the prison library project has provided many insights for volunteers and we have received many gifts from working with people serving time. For those of us who are white and able bodied, we experience being inside of the prison in particular ways. Many of us are identifiable as “helpers” coming in and we would never be mistaken for inmates. It is easy to get stuck on thinking only about our successes and see our project as something that is “better than nothing.” We are offering a very limited service using volunteers for something that prison librarians should be funded to do. This is the nature of the system we are working in. The underlying power dynamic is always present but sometimes we can fool ourselves into thinking we are all equal. But we aren’t, some of us in the room aren’t able to leave. However, as Maracle so beautifully says “Still, I am not tragic” and to see the people we are working with as tragic is to accept the dominant narratives around those in prison. It has also been an incredible gift to work with some of the people who are inside who are so resilient and are survivors of things many of us can’t even imagine.

    Looking Ahead

    Currently the Prison Library Committee is working on building a library service at the Women’s Correctional Institution in Headingley, Manitoba which is about a half hour drive from downtown Winnipeg. This facility will require a different model to get the books to the women. There is a library space, however, we are not allowed to have the women come up to the space to check books out due to some internal issues within the prison. Instead, we will have bi-weekly book talks, with volunteers bringing books to classrooms for women to choose from. We also plan to offer author talks in this institution. In addition to our volunteer projects in the prisons, a number of librarians from across Canada are part of a newly formed network under the Canadian Library Association. We will be communicating and sharing information about our challenges and successes through an email list-serve.
    In a time of “tough on crime” legislation, increasingly harsh sentences for property crimes and drug offenses, and the stripping down of services to the incarcerated, librarians such as ourselves need to be speaking out about these realities. Our volunteer run open library is something, but it is not enough.
    For more information on the Winnipeg-based Prison Library Committee: http://www.mla.mb.ca/content/prison-library-committee
    Disclaimer: Not everyone on the Prison Library Committee may share the same views expressed in this article.
    Many thanks to Sarah Clark whose work this article is based on. Thanks to Ellie Collier as my In the Library with the Lead Pipe editor for her dedication and expert editing to help me create this article and to Kathleen Houlihan for her thought provoking and insightful comments as an external editor. Thanks to the Prison Library Committee for enabling me to explore this project through writing and to Syrus Ware for inspiration.

    References:

    CBC News (2012, Feb 7). Winnipeg Remand Centre well over capacity. Retrieved from: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-remand-centre-well-over-capacity-1.1224048
    Correctional Service Canada (2007). Education programs and services for offenders. Retrieved from: http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/plcy/cdshtm/720-cde-eng.shtml
    Curry, A., Wolf, K., Boutilier, S., & Chan, H. (2003). Canadian federal prison libraries: a national survey.  Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 35(3), 141-152.
    Maracle, L. (2013). Blind Justice. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2(1), 134-136.
    Office of the Correctional Investigator (2013). Annual report of the office of the correctional investigator: 2012-2013. Retrieved from: http://www.oci-bec.gc.ca/cnt/rpt/pdf/annrpt/annrpt20122013-eng.pdf
    Vogel, B. (2009).The prison library primer: A program for the twenty-first century. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press.