 Hi everyone and welcome to our second training in our series for the Mellon Foundation funded expanding information access for incarcerated people grant project. I'm Junie Austin with San Francisco Public Libraries Geo and Reentry Services Department and today we're going to be highlighting the work of prison librarians from across the United States to provide some models and some training on the types of services that are available and the types of services that it's possible to create. We're going to open the training by hearing from Ray James about his lived experience with incarceration and as a librarian and then we'll move on to presentations from librarians who are in the field. If you would like to receive professional development credit for this video please go to the American Library Association's learning management system. We'll put the link in the description for this video and if you watch the video through that platform you'll be able to receive a certificate of participation to share with your employer and with that I will pass to Ray. Hello my name is Delvin Ray James but at the turn of the century I was 26930013 while serving a 70 month sentence in federal prison for a recoh charge related to meth and cocaine I decided to become a librarian. Everyone from my family, fellow incarcerated people and my supervised release officer discouraged me. Despite my age and lack of resources I made that dream happen by graduating from the University of Texas at Austin School of Information in 2007 with a Master of Science in Information Studies. Amazing serendipity made Dr. Loreen Roy my advisor. The year I was graduated the American Library Association chose her as president and she took me to Washington DC as a part of her presidential party. She introduced me to ALA and particularly a group called the Prisoners Forum where this formerly incarcerated person found a family with carceral librarians. One of those librarians shortly thereafter asked me to help her write the prisoner's right to read and interpretation of the library Bill of Rights and help move it through ALA. The document quotes Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. When the prison gates slam behind an inmate he does not lose his human quality. His mind does not become closed to ideas. His intellect does not cease to feed on free and open interchanges of opinions. His yearning for self-respect does not end nor is his quest for self-realization concluded. If anything the needs for identity and self-respect are more compelling in the dehumanizing prison environment. Prisoners' right to read was the first recent commitment by ALA to protecting the first amendment rights of incarcerated people. ALA is now finishing standards for library services for incarcerated and detained with states. We believe these standards are attainable and necessary for incarcerated or detained users and the librarians volunteers and educators who serve their information needs. Others have joined the fight for these rights including the Mellon Foundation which has committed millions of dollars to several programs. Pin America is deeply involved in the issue as the Marshall Project. Individuals such as Reginald Duane Betts have committed to such projects as Freedom Reads which has placed over 60 cell-based libraries in prisons with the ambitious goal of placing a library in every American carceral institution. Now retired I focused much of my time on the first amendment rights of incarcerated people. As I was becoming a librarian I considered working in prison but an honest self-assessment made me realize that I could not bear to hear that gate slam closed behind me. I decided to commit to doing as much as I could on the outside to help those still inside. I recently helped write the IFLA guidelines for library services for two prisoners the international standard for prison libraries with so many organizations and people turning their attention to the rights of incarcerated people. I have real hope that a significant improvements will come soon. Great. Thank you so much for sharing your life story with us and your life's work. I know that everything that we're doing through this training series builds on the work that you have done both with ALA and surrounding library services for incarcerated people and we just really appreciate you for being such an advocate for this work. I'm also for place setting the presentations that are going to come for the rest of this training. Thank you for joining us. I am Erin Boynton and I work with the Colorado State Libraries unit for institutional library development and we are a team of four librarians and an admin part-time admin who are part of the Colorado Department of Education. My background personally I attended the University of Washington's iSchool and came straight out of grad school into the Sterling Correctional Facility Libraries way up in what I call the Nebraska part of Colorado with no mountains and started working there. After that and that was a Department of Correction's job actually. After that I came to work for the State Library supporting institutional libraries and I'm now in Denver. I work primarily with adult institutions. We serve any state-funded institution that has a library so for institutionalized people so people in mental health hospitals, veterans community living centers etc are also under our purview but I mostly work with the adults in the CDOC the Colorado Department of Corrections. I'm active in the American Library Association and right now I'm actually working with a big group of people including Ray on the updated standards for prison libraries which we hope will get a vote in Chicago this year. All right so you get a little bit of sense of the area that my team covers. We serve about 30,000 Coloradans in 40 state-funded institutions all over the place. Here I am in Denver kind of the center top. I started up way up there in Sterling and we've got libraries all the way down to Trinidad near the border and then even all the way over in Grand Junction. So you can see it's quite a range that we have to cover for our and these are just for our prison libraries. My team has developed a model statement and our goal is to serve people who can't easily get resources elsewhere and we really want our libraries to look as much like public libraries as as possible so that when people get out they know what libraries do and they can take advantage of those resources that are out there in the communities for them. So as you can see my team in ILD keeps track of fund statistics like budget. We create reports and we buy materials for all of our libraries. We're always looking to improve the budgets we have for our libraries and get something that's at least comparable to what people can receive on the outside. This partnership has existed between the State Library and the Colorado Department of Corrections since at least the 1980s if not earlier. That was about as far back as I could find evidence of. And we're always trying to provide more and better access and new things. This picture on the right you can see my teammate Molly Bassford. She is delivering brand new launch pads to the Denver Complex Librarian Victoria Parnell who's there on the left. Launch pads are a playway product that come preloaded with games, graphic novels, general education, language learning. And we receive some budget thanks to the ARPA American Rescue Plan Act funds and tried to really focus on improving access to technology. This is a new kind of technology on the which on the outside you know we're used to all kinds of technology coming and going but in prisons it just doesn't exist in the same way so we're really excited that our facilities are excited to get these and that these materials are actually getting into the hands of residents. Molly chose the topic, she catalogued them and she's been hand delivering them across the state because since the pandemic our courier has been a little iffy so it's not always easy to get these nice new things to our libraries. Another cool thing that I'm really excited about because look how pretty and colorful it is. We also purchase switches, accessories and games for our libraries. The first few have been delivered and the goal is to provide in library programming with these. We provide tools for staff accreditation as well for the accreditation that prisons go through. Colorado currently uses the American Correctional Association accreditation so we give them documents all the statistics that we keep track of and are doing this through a website now and trying to keep everything as bright and modern looking as possible. You can also see that we provide right now it's an intranet just for our CDOC library folks but we're trying to expand it to the other institutions that we serve including the Division of Youth Services and this is a place where we try to give them info relevant to how to do their jobs, the things that they always come and ask us questions for whenever we get new staff and getting new staff is kind of just part of the job and training new staff is something that is a big part of my job as well. Last year we went through a migration and got a new integrated library system, our new library software. So we're trying to teach them how to make use of this, we're also trying to improve it so again it looks like what people can expect to see on the outside. You can see that top thing didn't find it on the OPAC is actually a form that residents have access to through their library computers and OPACs and they can submit names and subjects of books that they think their library should have and that has been very popular. We just rolled it out last week and we've already gotten dozens of things because as soon as you give somebody who's incarcerated a tool to make their lives better they will make good use of it so we're really excited to spend about a quarter of our budget just on patron-driven acquisitions and buying materials that way. We have taken on some huge projects in the last few years in a large part because we have tons of vacancies like many libraries. We have 34 positions statewide and 13 of those turned over in 2022. I would say maybe a quarter to a third are still vacant and we're just struggling to get those to get those positions filled again. So we want our libraries to get books on the shelves. All of these boxes you see came from one library that had been struggling with vacancies for many years in Buna Vista way up in the mountains. So we got two carloads of books took them back organized them and purchased materials to process them laminate glue all that all that good stuff. There were about 1300 books all told and we did a statewide training with them where they learned new and safety friendly ways to process books. If you're ever if you're interested in that you work with correctional libraries we're happy to provide that training. It's a way of processing hardcover books that allows even the people in the highest security levels to still be able to get those books which is our goal because we know a lot of nonfiction never even gets a paperback run. So we want to make things available no matter what the format no matter what the restrictions people are living under. So the training gave staff a chance to learn things hands-on learn the new system we're cataloging in. ILD also does really fun projects like and really work intensive projects like helping with renovations. This library in these pictures is the Colorado State Penitentiary Library which primarily provides delivery but also gets visits from people who live in an incentive unit where they do the jobs around the facility like cooking the meals and doing other sorts of things like that. You can see it's really small it used to have compact shelving which obviously doesn't work very well when you have actual patrons visiting the library. So you can see that laptop computer is there for use for our resident clerks who process the deliveries. So and that's a wireless connection as well in that library which you know eventually all of our libraries are going to have wireless connections and workstations that look more like that than a big like a big beachhead of a reference desk that we often see in many older libraries. We want to get our libraries to look like this where they're friendly and colorful and modern looking as well. And this is another example of something an innovative space in a library that is opening in a facility that closed and is reopened is called the beacon. The beacon is going to be mostly it's very minimum center so not even a fence around it mostly resident run so there isn't going to be a full-time library staff person here and these shelves that you can see are actually in the hallways in the living units so residents can go and check out their own books and eventually we want to have computers available for them with a wireless self-check connection which is kind of cool we've wanted to do self-check for a long time in all of our libraries even the ones that are staffed because it's kind of a radical idea to trust somebody who's so as little trusted as people who are incarcerated are often we we want them to have that model because we know self-check is a thing in public libraries even if you want to go order in McDonald's you often have to interact with a kiosk and so getting that level of access to technology and seeing how it goes and getting a chance to experience it while you're still incarcerated we think is a great way to bring the outside in and prepare people better for the transition they're making when they're going to re-enter so it's pretty radical we came we unboxed we put books in order it was a lot of work that all the books came from a library at a facility that had just closed this is my colleague Teresa Allen putting books on the shelves in January before residents were really there but we had a couple residents who were helping us out that day too which was pretty fun and this is yet another library we're in the midst of reopening the Centennial Correctional Facility South as you can see on the right it's already open for business and we have patrons in there all the time even though space is not quite what we want it to be the shelving is kind of not built for that space and we are working on plans that will better meet user needs at that specific facility the CC of South is also awaiting its collection also with ARPA funds last year we purchased about 7400 titles for an opening day collection just for this library and they are all waiting in the basement of our building because they need to be processed they need to have that secure processing for the hard covers and they need to be catalogued and all that good stuff we've got a couple rounds of volunteers from other units in the state library are going to help us out but here you can see Molly on the left and Theresa Allen on the right this was just us receiving the books in the basement to make sure that we got everything that we had purchased with those funds so we're going to get those cataloged for staff at that library and then we're going to hand deliver the books just the same way we did with the collection at Buna Vista those are just a few of the projects we've worked on most recently during our time at my time at the Colorado State Library and ones that we have fun pictures of we are always happy to help people answer get their questions answered that's a big part of our job is providing support and expertise to people all over the place including nationally so if you have questions don't hesitate that email address goes to me to my colleagues that you saw on the screen there and then also to our supervisor Renee Barnes thank you all for your time welcome my name is Christy Scott I currently supervise three Colorado Department of Corrections facilities libraries to include La Vista Correctional Facility San Carlos Correctional Facility and the Youth Full Offender System I have worked with the Colorado Department of Corrections libraries adult libraries since 2009 and in 2018 I began working with the youth libraries are huge promoters of education and creative programs we are constantly changing and evolving to provide the best possible outcome for the incarcerated individual we are able to offer read to the children the read to the children allows the individuals who are approved to select and read a book to their child their niece their nephew their grandchild their sibling the children's books are usually received through donations and the individual sets an appointment that works for them and the library schedule and they come in and read and record a video to send to their family member this is a great way for family reunification they will return to the library to create that recording and the library staff along with the library workers will use power director and create a DVD to send home to that family member the downside binding a DVD player the upside it is a great way and huge accomplishment to assist individuals with early literacy skills and to become successful readers and lifelong learners we are also able to offer interlibrary loans interlibrary loan program is offered through the Colorado State Library we're able to request many materials such as CDs DVDs audio books and other books that are not available in their collection from any public or color department corrections library as well as any library across the state the nation this program can take time to receive due to delivery issues weather delays and staffing issues otherwise it is a huge and wonderful resource for obtaining materials not readily available in their collection we have recently began offering music program we began with a resource kit offered through the Colorado State Library that consisted of eight ukuleles once there was an interest for this program staff requested approval to purchase instruments to be housed in the library we currently offer these items only in the library for checkout and hope in the future we could check out to the units however sometimes it's a security issue and security is number one the Colorado State Library also purchased two new ukuleles and a keyboard for la vista correctional facility and the youthful offender system these items are greatly appreciated and well received by the individual individual at those facilities each of these facilities music programs choose a class song to learn and share upon completion of the class the class can range anywhere from six to ten weeks which is really not much time to learn an instrument and any significant instruction the library staff used the power director program to create a dvd to share with the facility each individual is required to to sign a consent form so that we may share these photos and videos with staffing issues and vacancies across the board it can be difficult to find the time or the staff to offer such fun and exciting programs the time is already limited due to movement schedules within each facility the individuals are required to obtain education and receive work experience within their facility as you all are aware working and going to school does not leave much time for leisure recreational activities approval for musical instruments is another issue safety and security are always number one concerns but staff remain diligent we can continue these programs it is amazing to see and hear each individual's growth in the music program and to see the sense of pride on their faces when they realize they can actually play a song learning a musical instrument can improve memory muscle memory relieve stress enhance abstract reasoning skills and build confidence and give a sense of achievement getting people is never easy getting in front of people and playing an instrument and sharing your singing voice is even more scary playing a musical instrument can help people feel confident in a public setting and let's admit it it's fun music can bring us joy and lift our spirit and make life more enjoyable for us and those around us I hope to continue to provide multiple learning experiences and growth opportunities for every incarcerated individual thank you hello I am Carla Coon I am a librarian too from the Ohio Reformatory for Women or ORW for short and I am here today to talk about what I do at ORW we have approximately 2300 to 2500 women at the institution each month and that is across about 15 different security units many of the units are actually in a dorm style setting so it's an open area with bunk beds and about 150 women will average in each unit we are also Ohio's admission facility for all of the women institutions as well unfortunately because the emissions is kind of housed across the institution in a more secure area they have the opportunity to have like a different library than the rest of the general population they are at their different area and each week I actually will go out to the emissions area and I will take books, law books, legal forms, notary all that out to them so that way even though they are kind of segregated from the rest of the institution they still get the same library that the rest of the general population does the other units in general population do have scheduled library time each week it averages about 90 minutes per unit and during that time they can kind of come and go to either get books, get notary, have law library services and unfortunately it is just me we have also five incarcerated individuals who assist me three are circulation and two are legal clerks on top of that the patrons also have a gtl or now called viapath tablet that has an electronic kite system to it instead of the old paper kite format and because of this they can actually kite me to request questions books, notary services a lot faster in the library I have about 12,000 square foot which is not very big and about 4,000 books can fit in there and as I mentioned in the last slide you know we have an average of 2,300 women so we do a high tech system to maintain order and I have styrofoam door hangers on the outside and we have numbers about one through 15 so the women will actually line up in the hallway before their designated library time and they will take a number and when they come in they sign in and then continue on to peruse the shelves when they are done in the library they can either pass the number off to the next person or they can go ahead and hang it back on the door it's always amazing that something so simple works so well um when I first started we had an older circulation system called mandarin 3 and at the time we only had one circulation checkout which for all the population that came through the library having only one did kind of prevent us from keeping a really good flow to the library so during covid when the library was actually shut down for a brief time we upgraded to a mandarin 5 circulation system and I requested additional cute computer so we can have two checkout areas and an actual computer catalog system this actually lets us now you know help patrons learn the dewey decimal system make it more like an actual public library so that way when they go ahead and they're getting ready to leave and I give them options you know to go to the public library they're able to transition a little bit better also within the library we have five legal computers which they can go ahead kite me for access so that way we don't have any over overbooking basically so we know how many people are coming in and need additional help for legal the computers themselves have lexus nexus on it so they can go ahead and look up cases to assist them in appeals or if they need to copy and paste or write letters for their judicious now they've also started with the gtl via path tablets they do have lexus nexus access on that as well so they have a continuous legal access at their beds which sometimes can be interesting because if they have a question they have to wait or they have to kite and that can kind of take out some of the help that they need they kind of have to wait a little bit now one of the biggest things that we have uh since orw is a re entry aspect as well due to emissions we have one area called a one stop it's basically a one stop shop to assist individuals before they leave one of the main aspects of one stop is ohio means jobs access which uh all the libraries in drc have access to ohio means jobs and on the i'll continue that on the next slide to show you kind of more what that all involves as you can see here uh this is about a six month view of the library uh and what we kind of average in books circulated patrons and reference questions we kind of average 800 page or patrons a month and that doesn't include anyone passed for legal or re entry and we average about 1100 books every month which really is a good size portion of the library and as i mentioned on the last slide our re entry we have ohio means jobs this is the ohio means job website which we have access as our re entry in the library and our one stop it does look a little bit different in the library as it is specifically for incarcerated individuals to access at that point um they can actually come into the library and we will give them access uh onto the site and they can go ahead set up their resume um any information they want to put in there they can add in jobs that they work before they were incarcerated they can access and put in any certificates that they've got while they are have been incarcerated and they can actually search for employers the employers that are able to be accessed are incarcerated friendly so they have an idea that they have a good chance to get an interview or position with that company now they can also access this site once they leave so they would use their same login once they leave and it actually gives them access to the same information and they flip it over to completely live because while they are in uh or w it kind of pauses their whole job search and information until they feel comfortable to make it live but it gives them the ability to kind of jump start the job seeking before they get out and if they need to they can also touch base with them for years before they get out so they can set up interviews one of the other options that i use and they are actually starting to create on the gtl tablets is relink.org this is a large website for finding resources for individuals that are getting ready to leave and they may not have resources that they have you know available right off the bat and i like it because not only can it be used in Ohio but it can be used in other states because we do have some patrons when they leave are actually going to other states so they still have options and the one thing i like is that if they have a specific zip code they can go ahead and search and it gives them the options for re-entry family services basic needs and if we're going into re-entry you can see it has housing additional employment education support services re-entry groups coalitions for that area and then if they find one they like they can either click on it or if they are needing information from me i can click on it print the page and they have contacts available as you can see you know per county all that it helps them out gives them a lot of additional information and just contacts that they may not have had before which is always good now even though the Ohio means jobs and relink.org are really great items unfortunately on the flip side we do have pressing issues of ban books and overdubs it is an interesting aspect to dislike having to ban books but also understanding why as we we don't really call it a banned book list but a screened book list that way we kind of try to take some of the negativity out of it but many books and magazines on the list are not really average books many of the books will go to our main office and they have to meet specific criteria and requirements to actually be put on the list many are ones that will cover like how to survive in the woods if you were to be stranded for a while which you think would be you know good for learning how to camp all of that but we also have to on our side realize that if someone's requesting that they may be thinking about trying to see if they were to leave or maybe leave their work site if they were outside and then try to survive on their own which can bring up some questions at that point if you're getting many requests for those books a lot of the books also are graphic violence or sexually explicit material it is kind of interesting to see on the list that there has been someone that has tried to request a playboy magazine which at that point you can understand why the books are or the magazine would be banned at that point so it's not going to be an average book or you know something like to kill a mockingbird many of those books are still in the institution and still were requested heavily the books will stay on the list for about two years they will drop off at that point unless someone brings them up to be looked at again at ORW we really don't have any books that we look at we haven't had any brought up so we do have to stick with the main office ban book list but we ourselves at ORW do not have one the main pressing issue that I usually deal with are lost overdue and damaged books I do weekly overdue notices which luckily with the Mandarin 5 system I'm able to do a report every week and it'll let me know which books are overdue at that point I print out overdue notices and we will get those out to the units now I do have a steep fine of $5 if the book is not returned after the second notice but I actually have yet to even do one of the fines because $5 may not seem a lot to us but for them $5 is a lot so usually by the time they get the second notice they're like oh no I gotta get the book in and they return the book I do also work with the unit staff and the other institutions to get books back either when they transfer or if they're maybe pushing onto that third notice because I really don't want to give a fine if I don't have to one of the biggest areas I do have to hold them accountable to fines though is with our interlibrary loans and that will lead us into our local library work which is really fun and fascinating so I work heavily with the Marysville Public Library to do interlibrary loans we average about 100 books a month with the Marysville Public Library we do have the option to also work with the state of Ohio library but they mail those in and they take a lot longer to get in and they have a steep fine of $50 per book if anything happens to it now with our interlibrary loan program the state of Ohio for department of corrections we actually have a miniature like interlibrary loan contract that the patrons will sign when the books come in that contract actually states that they will return the book in the same condition that they received it in and if there's any damage it will be up to the public library on if they will charge for it in the four years I have been doing the interlibrary loan program we've only had an incident with three books where they've had to charge because there was severe damage to the books but the director of Marysville Public Library, Nisa Knowles and Laura Lemon who does the summer reading have been really really great to work with we got with them just this summer to kind of incorporate ORW into the public library summer reading and my patrons were so excited we had 35 participants 12 of them met the 60 hours red and they had a fun little paper where you could scribble in and color in like when you met your hours over to the right you can kind of see the five winners we kind of put them all the names into a large raffle and picked out five five winners and the public library created institutional friendly gift baskets of like a little Tupperware container and some candy and socks so when winter reading came up Lauren approached me and was like would you be interested and I already had some of my patrons asking if they were going to you know do this again so they were very excited while we had less participants we actually had more reading slips more books turned in we had 109 reading slips and those slips had four books each on them so keeping track of the slips were a lot easier than the hours met so we've actually talked about maybe switching for ORW during the summer reading to the slips as it might be easier for the patrons to keep track of now one of the unique things that we have at ORW is we do have women who will come in and to the institution and be pregnant at that time they can actually if they have meet specific requirements enter Hope House. Hope House is our on-site nursery where the women actually are able to live and raise their child at the same time so we worked with the Marysville Public Library to set up a nursery time so usually about once a month the Marysville Public Library will come in and they work with the social worker on site and they will have a book reading nursery time with the the babies we have been in talks we haven't worked out the logistics yet on also providing the babies with their own version of summer reading which will be interesting one of the other options that we have recently started doing is our Ohio poet laureate Kerry Gunther Seymour she has a four-week writing course that she does and she worked not only with ORW but 15 other correctional institutions across Ohio and it was very interesting to see each week all the different institutions sharing their writing in their poetry on topics that they were learning about at the end each of the participants are actually able to submit one of their poetry or writings for a contest. ORW had eight participants and all eight turned in poems so we're waiting to hear back once Ms Gunther Seymour looks through on the poetry and she's going to pick the top three across all 15 institutions we're hoping that next year they'll continue this because I know the women at ORW were really excited on it and it adds another option for their writing that they enjoy and that is all of my points at this time I thank you for joining me and if you have any questions you can reach me at my email address from the first slide thank you. Hello everyone my name is Shirea Omeda I have been a librarian at the California Men's Colony State Prison in San Luis Obispo for the last four years during my time providing library services at the prison I've had the opportunity to develop lots of different programs read inspiring book reports and listen to powerful group discussions running a library in prison requires resourcefulness resilience and a lot of patience my days are spent oscillating between a variety of tasks including de-escalating conflict readers advisory program development college research legal research all while supervising a team of eight to ten incarcerated clerks and a library of up to 50 users at a time despite the multitude of daily tasks one thing is a continual source of joy and inspiration that's library programs today I would like to share with you my experience running a few different programs at the California Men's Colony Prison libraries I hope that these examples will inspire you to engage with your library patrons and start similar programs in your libraries the types of programs my libraries host all into three categories the first kind of program is literacy centered these programs focus on reading specifically close and critical reading and reading to improve skill these programs are usually self-paced and allow the participant to choose the materials they want to engage with providing a variety of materials at different reading levels and in different languages is an important part of this type of program and ensures that anyone can participate regardless of literacy level or native language the next type of program is self-help these kinds of programs are led by and for incarcerated people and are focused on developing or strengthening skills that improve the individual self-help programs follow a set schedule or curriculum usually developed by an individual or group of incarcerated people at the California Men's Colony the last category of programs are creative creative programs give incarcerated individuals the opportunity to express themselves showcase their talents and display their work there is a huge pool of creative talent in prison and tapping into that is a great first step towards engaging the prison community these programs typically require a deadline or take place on a designated day and have a set of rules or parameters that guide submissions and performances now before I get into some examples of each type of program I think it's really important to emphasize that almost all the programs that run in my libraries are initiated and run by incarcerated people I believe it is incredibly important that the library serves as a place where people can not only find the information they're looking for but they also have the opportunity to learn with and from their peers I regularly solicit feedback and input from library patrons on what kinds of materials and programs they want to see in the library and I recommend that you do the same now that you have a framework for the different types of prison library programs I developed and facilitate I would like to share one example of each in July 2022 I developed a literacy program called read a book earn a chrono for those that don't work in a carceral environment a chrono is basically a letter of recommendation that says a staff person me can attest to the incarcerated person's participation in a library program and the benefits that that program provides the guidelines for this program are simple participants choose five books from a curated shelf and write a book report for each book by answering four questions after they complete the book report they submit it to me for grading after they have completed five graded book reports I write them a chrono now initially I started this curated bookshelf of classics like The Great Gadsby Love and the Time of Cholera Native Sun and Call of the Wild however I quickly expanded the offerings to include non-fiction books that center self-help themes some of the most popular books in this program are non-fiction titles like longing for dad man's search for meaning beyond the bullet healing the shame that binds you and striving to be a failure in this program I've also included books and book report forms in Spanish and books for readers with emerging literacies so that the programs are accessible to everyone my absolute favorite part of this program is reading the book reports I am constantly struck by the willingness of participants to self-reflect and lay bare traumatic and violent experiences and read about how they connect those experiences to the book I'd like to share with you just a few quotes from the dozens of reports I have read that detail how the books relate to or are interpreted by the readers this first quote states after reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck they write quote I can relate to this book because drugs were like the pearl to me no matter what happened I would continue to use until eventually I ended up in prison if I would have just quit using I would not be in prison today after reading Kite Runner by Khalid Hussini one report writes quote yes I'd recommend this book because sometimes reading about things you can relate to help you put into words emotions or thoughts you didn't know how to express and this can lead to healing after reading Striving to be a Failure by Puri Thompson one respondent wrote quote gangs do not promote nor fight for equality or protection of their communities street credit is not actually correct after reading Beyond the Bullet by Heidi Eumann this reader quotes from the book quote I would never get to talk to him never get to hold him never get to say I love you again the respondent then writes quote to me the significance of this quote is important because it's meaning hits close to home in so many ways I'm currently serving a life sentence for murder and not a day goes by that I don't regret my actions I have an 18 year old son that I miss and wish I could be out there raising but my victim's mother doesn't even have that I took that from her and the rest of her family I took the most precious gift that she had and to say sorry would never begin to justify the selfishness of my actions this quote puts into perspective how I hurt everyone and how they will always grieve this next reader states after reading everything you need to know when you're a male survivor of rape or sexual assault by John Levi he writes quote I learned that force includes fear of force it doesn't necessarily have to include force this opened my eyes to other ways I have impacted my victims I would recommend this book because men who have suffered sexual abuse isn't a topic that's spoken about often since launching read a book earn a chrono into that in July 2022 17 people have completed the program resulting in 85 books 25 people are actively working to complete the program for an average of 75 books and in the last six months library users at the east and west libraries have read a total of 150 books for the last five years the west library has hosted eight to 10 self-help programs each week these two our programs were created for and presented by incarcerated people these groups include a change in perception in english and spanish anger management victims awareness in english and spanish denial management bridging the divide and criminal gangs anonymous each of these programs runs for eight to ten week cycle and uses a combination of lectures homework packets assigned reading and group discussion after participants complete the program they receive a certificate and a chrono self-help programs follow a basic process first a library user will come to me with an idea for a program I asked them to create an outline of what their program is about what objectives they will teach each week and I do a short interview about their experiences with the topic we also discuss what materials they currently have and what I can help supplement next I asked them to run the group on a trial basis on their yard this gives them an opportunity to iron out any wrinkles in their curriculum and also garner interest in the group that the library can capitalize on later on some important considerations when it comes to developing and supporting peer-led groups in prisons the prison environment is constantly in flux it's normal for people to get moved to a different institution get sent to the crisis bed or even go to the hospital because of the impermanence of group facilitators and attendees it is extremely important to keep a backup of all program paperwork it's also crucial to make sure that there are at least two presenters for each group if a presenter is serious about the longevity of their program they will find people who will help them realize and keep the vision going in the last two cycles of 2022 the self-help programs in the west library have graduated 230 participants the most popular programs were victim victims awareness in Spanish criminal gangs anonymous and domestic violence the first ever creative program that I developed and ran was an open mic event this was one of the most attended and warmly received programs that I have ever run and was widely loved by both incarcerated patrons and staff the idea for this program came directly from one of my clerks who was passionate about poetry and with whom I regularly had conversations about creative writing and different topics he proposed that the library host an event where library users could share their work I thought this is a great idea and the east library open mic program was born in the summer of 2019 I ran the open mic program five time each event averaged about 40 participants for a total of 207 attendees in just three months these totals do not include staff nurses and mental health professionals that came to hear and encourage the people who performed participants sang songs did spoken word recited poetry wrapped in red essays it was an incredible event that forged a new appreciation for the creativity both among the attendees and the staff that got to see them in a new light these are just three examples of the different types of programs that I have developed and run at the prison libraries in the California men's colony I hope that you have found this information both informative and inspiring thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences