 this. When I first broached the topic with them, I was just kind of hoping, hey, maybe there's a class you've got somewhere I could just kind of sneak in, hand out a flyer or something like that. But they were like, no, you know, let's, let's make do this web presentation and get the word out to everybody. And I'm very appreciative that they're giving me this opportunity today. So I mean, when I was presenting on correctional librarianship, I'm trying to think back when I first considered it as a career. And the only thing that I could really think of when I was looking at what correctional librarianship with was, has anybody seen the Shawshank Redemption? I mean, you could say in the chat box, I'm probably not going to see it. But you know, it's like you got some rickety cart, you know, wheeling it from cell to cell, you know, yelling, you know, going book, book, book. I was either thinking it was that or, you know, I was watching lock up on MSNBC and going, okay, so I'm going to be trying to work with guys between like, you know, six sheets of like bulletproof glass. And it's, it's so far from that that, you know, it's kind of an in between to that. A lot of what we do has a lot of overlap with what you would do in the public. It's just we serve a very unique and special community. So with that, let me go ahead and move forward. So an overview of what I'm going to talk about. I know Kim already kind of gave a background to me, but I'll kind of go through that again. I'll give you a little taste of how correctional librarianship has kind of evolved throughout, you know, throughout time in kind of a general sense. I just did a little bit of cursory research and wanted to share, you know, where we were and where we are now. And I think where we are now is evolving in a very interesting and dynamic way. I'm going to give an overview of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, what are what the mission is. And under the California Department of Corrections or the CDCR, we have the Office of Correctional Education, which is responsible for providing most of the rehabilitative programming for inmates that are incarcerated in the CDCR and libraries happen to fall under that umbrella to talk about what they're doing now too. I'll give you an idea of what it's what it's like in a typical day with me as a correctional librarian working at Salinas Valley State Prison. And then I'm also going to share how to go about pursuing CDCR librarianship opportunities through the, you know, basically what you're going to have available to you if you take a position and go through the application process and, you know, just kind of make that as easy as I can. So going through my personal history, some of it's going to be redundant because you already heard it, but I graduated from San Jose State in San Jose State University in 2006. When I graduated, I'm like, man, I have a master's now, you know, it's going to be really easy to find a job out there. And I found that it was it was pretty challenging getting out or when I got out there and I was looking for a position because I didn't have unlike a lot of my peers that in my cohort that I went with who had been working in libraries and and had decided to pursue their degree and continue continue their career within their their current organization. I didn't have any library experience. My previous experience was I did substitute teaching. I did a few other kind of odd temp jobs here and there, but I didn't have any direct library experience. And I'm going to spoil something later on when you work for CDCR as a librarian, you don't require any experience. Well, we're very happy to train you. I'm just putting that out now, but I'm going to try and drum that in everybody's head as we keep going. But what I was really looking for when I was trying to find a job in a library was I wanted a full time job with benefits. I really didn't want to try and work something part time, hoping it would evolve into something that was full time. I wanted something that paid a living wage. I was I was tired of living at home and my parents were tired of me living at home. So I had to I had to make that change happen. And I wanted opportunities for growth. I'm the way I'm put together. I'm always looking to learn things like my one of my goals when I'm at work is to try and learn one new thing a day. I feel like I've I can accomplish something if I've done that. So I'm just constantly trying to grow. So that was very important to me. And it was it was crazy that I didn't initially think about correctional librarianship, even though both of my parents were correctional educators. My dad was a teacher. He worked for the he worked for the women's facility in Chow Chila. And my mother worked for she worked for in Corcoran. I'm spacing on the name right now. The California State Prison at Corcoran. There we go. And they were the ones saying like, Yeah, you should really put in this put in an application to go to the prison. And of course, I was like, Nat, I want to work in prison. I want to work here. I want to do this. I want to do that. You know, and it took a while before I finally said, Yeah, let me let me go ahead and put in an application. And one thing I really want to try and leave everybody with when I think about everybody, all of my colleagues that I work with. My dad used to say working for CDCR is the best kept secret in the state of California. And what I mean by that is people don't seem to consider corrections as a career or as a job option. Until they until somebody comes up to me and says, Hey, have you thought about working at the prison? And I want to say like, probably 90% of the people that I talked to, that's what it took for somebody to say, Yeah, maybe this would be something an interesting place for me to work or Yeah, I think that would be a good job for me. So a big reason that I'm here today is for those of you that are listening now and maybe hopefully listening to like recording later. These jobs are there and I'm encouraging you to consider working for the California Department of Corrections, whether as it's a librarian or something else, because I think it can be a great career, I think it can be something that you can really go go home and feel very proud of at the end of the day. It's a challenging career, but I really think it's worthwhile. And I really want to, you know, put that out there now. So my experience I've I just got to my 10 years working in corrections. When I started my career, I started at the correctional training facility in Soledad, California, where I spent three years. Those were a those were a great three years I learned so much. Not just about librarianship, but about how to work with people how to work. It was just it was such a it was such a great experience that I was I was constantly challenged every day. Because there was always something going on. There was something new to learn. There was some new resource that I was becoming I was discovering. So that was a great, great time in my career. The only hard part was it was also during a time when the state was also going through that horrible budget crisis. So in order to make things kind of work and and and also for professional growth opportunity. I I left librarianship for a couple years and went to the academy and was a correctional officer. So I got to experience not just the rehabilitative side of corrections, but I also got to work on the safety side. And it's it was it was a very they're they're they partner but it was a very different way of looking at what looking at corrections because when when you're working on the rehabilitative side, it's a lot of it's about helping and encouraging and trying to to you know, motivate people to do better on the security side. It's like, okay, we need to make sure you follow the rules that we need to make sure you're not getting out of here. But it was it was a great experience and I learned a lot doing that. I ended up leaving two years later for kind of the same reason there were there a couple. They were kind of letting not letting people go but there were some cutbacks and positions and but thankfully a senior librarian position was available at Salinas Valley State Prison Prison, which was the state and kind of the step up from the librarian position. I was I wasn't previously and from there I've been running a library program there for about five years. I just got news not too recently that I will be taking the position as a senior librarian at the Correctional Training Facility again. It was under not the best of circumstances. The senior librarian passed away over there, but they kind of needed somebody to step in and help kind of get the program going. So I'm I'm going to take on that challenge starting on the 29th. So, you know, just kind of moving around get new experience a lot of different things. I'm also currently serving on the Institutional Library Advisory Committee. What the ILAC does, we provide one of the main components that we do is provide training to all of the library librarians, senior librarians, and library technical assistants throughout the state of California. We're currently in developing our training for where we're going to be doing a training in April of this year and we get everybody together. It's a great experience. We learned so much. We're able to share our expertise, share out the programming that we're doing, share out different resources that we've developed, or different programs that, you know, we kind of piloted and we could see being implemented kind of statewide or in certain prisons. So it's just it's so much fun to do. We talk monthly and we have different basically different areas of librarianship that we're trying to focus in on and makes CDCR a librarianship, you know, really shine in a lot of ways. My committee that I'm or my subcommittee that I had is on literacy and digital literacy because I think that's so important, especially for the the population that that's served by the prison or that that we serve in the prison. Many of them have no they don't have any skills. Their skill set is so limited it's very difficult for them to access information and really giving them the tools or giving them the ways to access different resources really, you know, and you can kind of see that now they've got this whole world that opens up to them. That's really what kind of makes me passionate about what I do and I'll talk about that more. I've also been authorized to provide training on what we're calling as transformative correctional communication. So it's essentially a way to encourage the inmates that we that we work with to start getting out of their criminal thinking patterns. So it's a lot of open-ended questions a lot of a lot of ways to try and draw out, draw out the conversation in a way that's going to helpfully and get them to critically think about their perspective and maybe challenge their current and current way of thinking in a way to kind of make them more productive. It's being developed by his name is Scott McClure and he's worked in corrections for many many years and it's been an exciting process to be part of that and within a year we're going to be rolling that out to every institution and I'll be one of the people that's going to be providing training on that along with several others and I think it's going to really revolutionize the way that we communicate within corrections because that's one thing that we want to work on more because in corrections you really want to try and get people to do things of their own recognizance because when people kind of get obstinate in corrections it it results in some kind of bad things that that can happen and we all we that's one thing that we all want to avoid. So giving a cursory overview of correctional librarianship and kind of a general sense this is from some of the literature that I was I was looking at. Librarianship from the 1800s really in the 1970s was not was not really great. It was it was more they were lucky if they got anything if we were more in that punitive stage and that's a that's a really long period of time when you think about it. About the best that they could hope for in a lot of library programs within the prisons was well here's some religious materials you know essentially read these you know take them to heart and you'll be a better person and that that happened for many many years after that they might have incorporated maybe some psychologists or you know some philosophers and said well okay follow this philosophy or this this way of thinking and and you'll be a better person. It was all used essentially to try and change the way the person thought but it was kind of saying like follow this and and you're going to do better it it really didn't but that's not really offering offering a whole lot to the populations that are served in the prison so for a lot of years they really didn't have what I would call meaningful library access. In 1915 library started to focus primarily on and there was a lot of court cases that kind of dealt with that providing some legal access to make sure that they had these guys had access to the court so that kind of took over and continues to this day and becomes a major component of librarianship you know is providing legal access. It wasn't until when and in 1915 coincidentally there was a that was the first library guy put out by the American Library Association about you know prison libraries. I was looking for I found a reference to it I was on a I was unable to find a copy unfortunately I'm still looking so if anybody finds that I'd be more than I'd be really interested to see it. If you want to see any of the information about current basically the current guide to prison libraries I've got a link right there in case anybody's interested to read some literature on that. In the 1970s you finally started to see more funding for recreational library programs where it was like where it was yeah let's let's start encouraging these guys to read in other ways except you know giving them religious or strictly like self-help materials. And since that point we have seen that our library collections have grown you know quite a bit in each of the libraries any of the each of the prisons they're all going to have several either one major library or several small libraries and all of those libraries are going to have recreational materials for checkout and it's a big part of what we do along with the legal part of it. And following up with that prison libraries are the door to the court. We are the primary means that inmates receive access to access to the court and the case bounds versus Smith. It requires that librarians run correctional libraries so you have to have you have to have a librarian providing those services and it also encourages additional rehabilitated programs in that one. Gilmore v Lynch another landmark case establishes minutes standards for library materials so there's a certain level of of materials that we have to keep that we have to maintain in the library no matter what in order to quantify is like reasonable access to the to the courts. And concurrently a little bit after that Lewis v Casey it's another case that deals with actual entry standards so I mean I don't want people coming into correctional librarianship going okay well if I go in here I'm going to be getting you know all these key all these cases I'm gonna have to know all these cases with Lewis v Casey there has to be an actual injury standard for you know any you know any lawsuits or anything like that related to library access even though those do happen so you know there's a lot of checks and balances that go with go with access to the library and providing legal services to these guys and really we get to that just kind of brings us up to today because I think we're all more interested in today than we were about several years ago I mean I'm kind of a kind of a nerd but I I only could do so much before I was like I want to go do something else today I think is a very exciting time for correctional librarianship and that's what I really want to focus on today we are really motivated to expand access to recreational reading literacy programming that's that's really what we talk about and what we're all motivated to try and do we're trying to encourage encourage additional library programming that's going to that's really going to to encourage these guys to start challenging their their criminal thinking you know behaviors to develop skill sets that are going to make them more employable when they get out and the library in the library and I'll talk about some of the education programs after this that that we kind of partner with we have a lot of freedom in what programs we can create because we're not really we're not really stuck in a curriculum we can find we can identify we can do in like a needs assessment in our prison and find that yeah we people really want to have like I'm going to say we we did kind of a survey and we had some guys that were like well we really want to have do like a trivia program or we want to do like a trivia night or something like that because they thought it'd be kind of fun to like learn some facts and and um and uh if I got my cat hanging on next to me but like learn some learn some fact you know they want to learn some facts and they want to have some friendly competition and and so one of my co-workers did a program like that and it was a huge hit something like that might work in an education and programming but they aren't given as much latitude you know a lot of times they're kind of it's kind of focusing on what they need to do so we do a lot of really cool things and we get a lot of latitude and what we're able to do there at Salinas Valley just to kind of share what we're doing because you know when you kind of see the walls you just kind of assume you can't really see what's going on there even though I'm going to put that out there we're very happy to have people have people come in you know we just have to go through a process and I'll cover that a little bit later and people if you're always free you know feel free to contact me and we can try and set something up we're um we're um we have at Salinas Valley we have 12 programs and uh you know 12 academic programs I should have put that there and five career technical training programs on five different yards so we do a tremendous amount of programming on a given day um and that those programs include adult basic education levels one two and three so we have academic programs for all different academic levels that's appropriate to their placement we do testing for both the GED program and the CASIS which is the comprehensive adult student assessment system trying to gauge you know basically what academic services they need we provide college programs both through correspondence through like close coastline and we also have instructors come from Hartnell which is one of our local community colleges to provide classes as well we have programs that focus on inmates that are part of our enhanced outpatient so they're in a higher level of mental health care but we still try and encourage them to get education services while they're also getting treated for their mental health issues we have um inmates are part of our developmental disability program that um that essentially they have a mental um mental impairment or disability that um you know we we are cognizant of but we make sure that we are able to get them the services that they need to encourage them to further their education we have a transitions program which is set up to get to basically develop life skills that guys need upon you know about right before they're about to parole because many of them don't have those skills and we want to make sure that they're going to be successful in in making that transition from prison to real life after that and then we also have several of our career technical education programs so we've got our HVAC program heating air conditioning and cooling electrical programs automotive paint welding office services and related technology giving these guys the vocational skills they need or that are going to hopefully get them a job once they once they parole and get out making sure you know increasing the chance that they're not going to come back and come back to prison and through all those academic programs we really try and support and and and partner with them to try and make their programs better so like for example I'm trying to trying to partner with our our welding instructor so what we're what we're doing the process of doing is purchasing materials to include on the yard where we have where we have our welding program have materials in the library they're going to support support the the curriculum that the welding instructor is doing we're also purchasing with the funding that we have additional sets that we're going to keep because once these guys go to their welding class they're behind essentially a wall and they're not able to go until the end of the day we're creating kind of a satellite library that's going to be available to those guys with supplemental materials that are both going to help them not just with welding but help them with their some of them are also working on trying to get their GED and trying to get and some of them trying to get like their some testing done for college and that kind of thing so we're trying to get those materials purchased and available to them so it's really kind of cool when we can work together and try and increase the outcomes and and make the you know make the curriculum a little bit easier for these guys to access you know we don't have to just work in a bubble we're all kind of partnering to try and make ourselves better but everything that we do in correctional librarianship is designed to increase public safety we want these guys to get the programming they need that's going to make them make them successful when they get out we don't want to see them come back I mean that's when I see guys parole a lot of times it's like man I hope I never see again and I think sometimes that's the best compliment I can give them so a breakdown of how big the California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation is we have 35 adult institutions four youth facilities 44 fire camps seven community correctional facilities and two out of state transfer facilities and we are all throughout the state of california we are a huge entity and we operate in most parts of of california our budget for the 2017-2018 fiscal year was 10.1 billion dollars so we and we're one of the largest employers in california based on what based on records that I could find kind of breaking down those that are listed as full-time part-time or intermittent we employ about 27% of the entire state workforce at salinas valleys and and I want to put a caveat on this that doesn't include any contract employees that we have as well you know that the contract employees that we have are actually not part of this and so we're an even bigger entity than that at salinas valley state prison we employ you know about 1600 people so it takes a lot of people to to run a prison we we require a lot of a lot of people there if we're looking at just library staff we have one principal librarian her name is brandy Buenafe and she works at our headquarters she's kind of our the person that oversees the entire library system throughout the state we have 35 senior librarians so each institution each adult institution is going to have a senior librarian that works there and coordinate services for the library program we have 54 librarians and some some facilities will have more than one librarian it just kind of depends on how many libraries are serviced by that location and then and we also have 83 technical assistance and the same thing that kind of varies depending on the needs of the institution so we have a lot of library staff that we employ through the state and every every facility throughout the state is going to have library staff that work there at present CDSR is responsible for supervising over 183,000 inmates and that was the most current I think that's the most current report that I had access to as of January 10, 2018 so it's a it's a large number of people that are overseen by like I said inmates and parolees I think when I broke it down to the institutions we have there's about 125,000 people that are currently incarcerated in California so we have a large population that we need to provide library services to and every one of those individuals has a right to access library services under our policies and procedures so it's a it's a big responsibility the CDSR vision is with our partners we protect the public from crime and victimization everything that we do is to try and make the public safer and that works both from the security side making sure that the guys you know that the inmates that we have don't get out and then it's also working on the rehabilitative side to give these guys the tools they need once they get out to to be successful in society not reoffend the mission that we have is to enhance public safety through safety safe and secure incarceration of offenders effective parole supervision and rehabilitative strategies to successfully reintegrate offenders into our community and goes to that where we're all about public safety with everything that we do now talking about the office of correctional education under the division of rehabilitative programs which is kind of the major umbrella but OCE does the bulk of what we do the other side of that is with the like the substance abuse treatment programs and some of the some of the community programs that come in that's kind of our other partners in this we provide educational programming adult basic education high school equivalency career technical education college recreation library services educational television programming and community transition planning there's currently a plan we have a strategic plan in place called the 2020 plan where we're trying to enhance service in these four key areas in environment so we're trying to create create environments that are going to improve learner outcomes you know we're still working on that prisons I'm not going to lie is a little bit gray sometimes we work on trying to make things a little bit a little bit brighter but sometimes that's the reality that we have with that we're working with but we're getting better with that and trying to develop to increase the technology that we have increase you know to to purchase materials that are going to make coming into the classroom not feel like prison as much and encourage a kind of a more hopefully encourage the students to be more committed to getting improving their education or improving those outcomes focusing on teaching creating a culture that embraces continuous improvement customer focus and student success one thing you're going to see is it's it's the focus is now on student success and we're talking about education programming is all trying to make sure the students just successful and that's what drives the decision making for the the Office of Correctional Education now it's trying to make sure these guys are successful and they're not going to come back support which is a big part of what the the library is part of that's kind of our thing utilize resources to hand student success and and we're really the key to that to that number three we want the library is trying to be the one that is going to be the kind of the thing that lifts the entire department you know the education department up and really makes our programs even more effective and really looking for innovative people that are interested in in bringing that forward because you know we need those those fresh ideas coming because I think we we're the greatest support that we're going to have and making these programs successful and access right now and it was kind of funny we had a kind of conversation with I had a conversation not too long ago with Shannon Swain with several others and she's our superintendent and they were telling us the story about with within CDCR they were really excited it's like wow we're reaching half of you know half of the inmates that are incarcerated in California and this was a couple years ago you know so that's you know over 60,000 people it's like we get services to 60,000 people well the other side of that is like well what about the other ones that aren't getting the services that they need so there's been a huge push to make sure that every every inmate that's in housed within CDCR has access to some type of rehabilitated programming and that process is continuing and it keeps getting it's been getting my observation is it's been getting better you know year after year after year we're seeing a lot more programs develop so our patrons we have a lot of different missions so every institution is going to have a different mission some some are reception centers so when these guys are finally sentenced by the court they're sent they're processed and they kind of determine where their placement would be best at which institution they're going to be best depending on their depending on their needs we have reentry facilities with guys that are going to be that are short to the house that need to and I should say you know short to going home I'm using my my prison terms without even thinking about it but they're they're going to be pro-links and so they need those reentry services to you know right now to make sure that they're going to or to encourage them to be successful about when they get out we have high security institutions working in prison some guys aren't super nice so you know they need a higher level of security I happen to work at one of those institutions so we have additional precautions that are in place with those we have female institutions that only has female offenders and they have specialized programming because of that but when you're working within CDCR you're generally working with inmates that are there because of a felony conviction and and just so we're not sugarcoating with anybody felony conviction is a serious crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year or by death examples include burglary arson rape and murder so when you work with CDCR these are the guys that you're going to be working with you know they they weren't there for for stealing from the collection plate they they were there for doing some bad stuff so then that's one thing that's that's not for everybody and but it's you know once you kind of recognize that and you could see that we work in a very safe environment because of the support that we have from several different staff it's definitely manageable and we also do have some mental health placement I work with some that are basically they have safety concerns with working being in the state hospitals while they're trying to get better to go to trial and sometimes those are part of our population as well the patients we have largely people of color most are from lower economic so you know they have a lower economic status there's a lot of substance abuse issues we deal with a lot of mental health concerns which many are not identified until they get to get to prison and they finally get treatment many of them have limited education and many have a limited employment history so we're you know we're working sometimes with with people who haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to this point we're we're trying to do a lot of catch up so that's one of the challenges and one of the things that kind of motivates us to try and get them those skills and and make up for lost time so Dan the life person life is regimented we have times for everything we have a schedule that pretty much doesn't change day to day to day we have a time for breakfast there's a time to go to come to the library time to go to education they have appointments to go to medical they have a certain a certain time to go to yard everything is very very regimented very structured but conversely it's always subject to change if there's an incident that happens on the yard or you know there could be a natural disaster that happens pipe could break something some major event can happen and then our program gets suspended so it's interesting on one hand we're very regimented and on the other you have to be quick to adapt to change at any time because you never know when it's going to happen so like going through my day my work day starts at seven thirty in the morning and I'm going to use military time because that's what we do in corrections so I've started at seven thirty hours I check in I do my security checks one thing you do in a prison no matter who you are is check your area to make sure that there's no safety issues that can occur later and that you've got your inventory everything could be accounted for because it's amazing what you can make a weapon out of I confer with my co-workers because we work I work along with education staff in the same area so I coordinate with them I coordinate with our local officer to find out if there's anything any changes to programming that day if I need to modify what I'm going to do based on our current program just so I can I can generate the appropriate lists so the housing units can be notified who I want to come to the library today unlike out there in the public we kind of do everything by we schedule everybody so they have to we have to schedule them just to show up and they're not just able to walk out of their cell and come to the library we have to actually say okay I want this individual and this individual and this individual and we have systems in place to make sure that that's done fairly and concurrent with the policy that we have usually our library program begins by about oh wait 30 hours wait 30 in the morning when inmates get there we have to have them sign in we have to identify who our inmates are because we have we have to know if they've had access in the event of like litigation you know one thing that happens that these guys claim they don't have access to the library sometimes they will they will tell us they'll initiate a lawsuit trying to say that they didn't receive access to the court we have to demonstrate they did have access to the court through their access history and we're also aware of knowing who's there you know we have to know who is in our library at at any particular time in the event there is some event that some some event happens that we have to be we have to be accountable and we have to be able to account for all the inmates that are there to make sure everybody's safe and you know and make sure that we can kind of we can kind of manage the event the best we can during a session basically I'll work with my library clerks and I've paid inmate library clerks that assist me for the most part so we do a lot of reference requests most primarily legal but we'll get other reference requests we do photo copies we provide forms to the court and we do a lot of and we provide access assistance and utilizing our leads or library electronic delivery system computers to access legal legal information on the computer that's one thing I kind of enjoy doing because I I enjoy doing search strategies so it's kind of it's kind of fun to work with these guys especially many of them who have kind of those limited technology you know limited technology experience and kind of give them tools and kind of open up those resources to them we provide access to the court in accordance with the California Code of Regulations Title 15 Division 2 so if anybody really wants to know how CDCR runs or what our policies are that's where you would look the specific version for this for access to the court is 3160 we provide reference services so since we're they don't have internet in most cases are not supposed to you know we're kind of their point of contact if they need anything for their class if they need anything for their for their legal cases a lot of times we're going to be the primary reference or primary reference service that they're going to use within the prison we provide access to whatever recreational reading that we have that's that's part of what we do provide copies of court administrative forms and provide photocopy services to the courts and some institutions are doing e-filing the institution I'm at we haven't started that yet we run until battle in 15 hours do another inventory and security check which is a big part of what we do take a 30 minute lunch 12 30 we kind of rinse and repeat do the same thing do another inventory check and we're done by 1600 hours and during that day we might have special projects that we're going to do we're given a lot of latitude with what we what we need to do skills develop as a correctional librarian you develop policy develop you know you learn how well you learn how to communicate because sometimes we deal with some very challenging individuals you learn how to develop policies and how to implement them because we work in a very policy driven and kind of a rule driven as I was saying like the title 15 division two which kind of coordinates our policies you have to work within that policy so when we develop policies we have to make sure it chives with that so you kind of learn how to manage those different policies and kind of create it to hopefully encourage whatever whatever policy you're doing for your library program to be successful you learn to be situationally aware since we're safety conscious you learn how to notice when things don't feel right or when there's something that's just kind of a little off it's kind of something that you develop over years working working in corrections you learn how to develop programming you know you can develop some really fun programming while you're while you're working for CDCR and you learn how to work with other departments other staff we coordinate with medical we coordinate with teachers we coordinate with custody so you find out to talk to different people with a lot of different people with different missions as a correctional librarian you're given a lot of latitude and how to run your program within policy and and I'll put that out there when you when you're a librarian or you're a senior librarian it's it's really your program in a lot of ways and you're given kind of I don't want to say free reign but you're given a lot of latitude and how you want to run run your program and what's going to be interesting what's going to be an interest to you and what's going to benefit your patrons the most so now I can finally get to talk about the actual position so thank you for bearing with me everybody correctional librarian positions so the first thing that we have is a library technical assistant there's the pay range right there usually it requires two years of increasingly responsible two years of library experience or equivalent in library science since I'm talking to people here at San Jose State I think this is a great option if you're trying to get into state service because it can help you build your retirement let you learn what it likes to what it's like to work in a correctional library and basically get the benefits of working as an employee while you complete your degree and then once you've completed that degree then I would definitely encourage you to go for the you know go for a librarian librarian position or senior librarian position which I'll talk about in a second I want to put this out there they're during our last contract negotiations with SEA 1000 there are some tuition reimbursement programs that may exist for LTA positions and there might be some alternate schedules but what I would say is when you're interviewing to make sure to you know get that worked out you know just work with supervisor and see what's available there because it's it's the programs exist but you just want to make sure there's funding and a few other things that that are there but I want to put those out there so you know about them and if anybody has any questions after this I'm more than happy to to point you in the right direction that'll tell you about those resources the librarian position there's the pay range right here the greatest thing about this is entry level but there's no experience needed we are happy to train you if you take on a job working as a CDCR librarian we want to give you the we want you to be successful and there's many of us that'll mentor you we'll give you a resource you know give you the resources you need to be successful and also please note you could apply while attending school but must have completed one year towards an MLIS to be offered employment so you don't even have to complete your degree at present you can come work for corrections after a year and just continue working on your degree and and you can still be and you can be working in a librarian position and the senior librarian position usually you know you're going to be in charge of a of a library program at an institution it takes two years of experience working as a correctional librarian a correctional librarian or a librarian or three years of increasing responsible and very professional library experience so you can come from the outside if you've got that experience and you can come in as a senior librarian too and it's kind of the same rules you have to have completed at least one year towards your MLIS to be offered employment as a senior librarian as well so there's a lot of opportunities and we're not asking you to you know know everything when you come in we just you know we want somebody to come in and we can we can help you be successful we've got a lot of support systems built up that way so the way that you would apply is go to cdcr.ca.gov career opportunities got a link there and click on library services and it'll give you all the information you would need you would need to fill out a you'd need to mail a state application which is an std 678 fill that out and also submit the supplemental questionnaire once you're on the once you're on a list after submitting this supplemental questionnaire that placement is good for 12 months one thing I will caution you with is make sure you meet those minimum qualifications before applying or you could be you could be barred for applying in a 12 month period there is a possibility doesn't happen that often but I want to put that out there and also be patient it may take some time I would encourage some people who are maybe just starting their starting their education at San Jose to go ahead and apply as soon as you can because sometimes it can take a while to get on the list you know sometimes it can take a month or two but as you move forward it's going to you're going to get through the process and then you'll be in a position where you could be offered employment right away and kind of start that career while you finish up your education and have a good career to show for it my our principal librarian went ahead and put this offer out there if anybody has any questions about the hiring process or needs any assistance feel free feel free to contact her I would say email is the best way email her and she will she will get you put in touch with the right the right resources you need to get to navigate the application process and you can contact me as well I will make sure refer your information to her as well some of the challenges when working with this population it's primarily a direct service it's not like lock up where you're going to have glass in between you you work directly with the inmates you're in the same room as them for the most part that's that's something that we kind of that you kind of have to navigate and so it makes you very situationally aware because you are you know dealing with convicted felons you have to develop security mindset while you're there everything we do is has security in mind we're about public safety so that's a mindset that we have to get into when we get into the prison and as soon as we get in the gate until we leave we have to make sure that we have that basically that security security hat on making sure that we're doing things safely we work within a paramilitary structure within the prison so there's going to be a lot of if for people who are in the military would probably be comfortable with this some people aren't comfortable with it so some of our decision making is done kind of in that that type of structure we deal with resource issues sometimes with the state like anything else that kind of ebbs and flows sometimes we're we're doing great we have plenty of money to meet all of our needs other times the state budget kind of goes on the wayside and sometimes we're doing we're trying to do with what we were doing with less we deal with litigation from inmates and that sometimes that can be time intensive and takes a lot of time the only thing I will put is the attorney general's office to support you know does represent us in those issue you know those cases so most of the time you're not going to have to see anything if if you ever become named in an action and then separating work from personal life can be challenging for some because you kind of get stuck in that security mindset and some people aren't able to leave it leave it leave it at work we do have the employee assistance program and the peers support personnel to help through those challenges however the advantages like I said there's no experience necessary we have a great library support network we have the institutional library advisory community that I'm on we have people that can mentor we have email groups that we had work continually we have an instant messaging program we have statewide trainings that we do we also go to conferences regularly as long as they're in California so like the California Library Association Conference most of us are invited to attend that every year by the state and they provide our hotels and conference fees and everything else at least right now and it's great that we're able to do that kind of professional training within our institutions we do regular staff we do regular staff trainings we also are working with professional learning community I should put communities instead of committees where we're trying to build more cohesivist within our departments and then what I'm on the transformative correction of communication and developing new ways to you know to communicate with each other there's a lot of flexibility in the job essentially you can make the job what you want there's a lot of there's a lot of latitude to develop the type of librarianship that you're interested in and build the type of program that you want as long as it kind of falls within that policy and final thoughts I think it's a great career I've been doing it for a lot of times or I've been doing it for 10 years now and it can be either a lifelong career or it can be something that's going to help you get to the next part of your career like I said when you come in we're going to there's many of us that are committed to making you making sure that you're successful and giving given kind of what you need to to grow yourself professionally and there's many of us that are very encouraged to do that and we're I'm this is kind of me but I'm going to put it out there we're looking for people who are passionate about programming and looking to improve the culture of correctional librarianship so if you're if you kind of want to make a difference even if it's making a difference one person at a time I know we said one book at a time at the beginning you can you can do that in correction so you could be very proud of what you do at the end of the day so this is me feel free to email me if you have any questions after this I'm I'm more than happy to field what questions I can I can't field questions if you want to find out how like and make Smith is doing is he eating enough I can't do those kind of questions but I can do you know I can definitely put you put you in contact with the right person if it's a question outside of my expertise or I can put you in touch with the I'm I'm I'm just there to try and answer whatever questions I have what I would encourage anybody to do who's interested in working in a prison contact contact me or contact Brandy Buenefe our principal librarian to set up a tour if you're interested in seeing what's going on where we're a public entity and we have a responsibility to be transparent with what we do and we're very happy to show off what we what we do and you know make sure that you're comfortable if you're ever considering a career knowing what you're walking into these are some of my sources if anybody's interested in looking at those and it's finally time for questions and I talked for way too long this is Kim and I'm going to encourage everybody to go ahead and unmute themselves and ask questions if they if you have them because I think that we've got a small group and that might be easier but I'm reading Kelsey's question can you put up Brandy's information one more time so if we could put up Brandy's slide Oh absolutely and when Matthew and I were talking about this before he was saying that Brandy is actually very very excited to work with any of the San Jose students and so I would encourage you to feel very comfortable reaching out to her and then we have a question there Matthew from Dennis okay let me see if I can pull it up real quick here we go so it's okay if I read the question just read the whole thing okay I'm curious what kind of digital resources inmates in California have access to I work for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision at Downstate Correctional Facility and Fish Kale New York which is a maximum security reception facility at the moment Peter Access they are only able to access two legal databases in the department directives that okay so typewriters use forward processing well so you're talking about like the type of electronic resources that we have right now the primary electronic resources that we have is our what we call our leads computer so it's access to our legal information that's that's kind of the primary resource that we give to these guys anything outside of that right now we are currently libraries staff are kind of having to facilitate for them because they're not able to directly access the internet so we kind of have to be that go between so but in the future I'm not sure how far away this is we are working to try and create essentially white listed sites for our inmates to access you know to do like research projects or or especially for the college program that's kind of how we're using it to get there but so they'll have access to certain sites that have been opened up on essentially a Wi-Fi network that's currently being rolled out I don't know when the completion date is because I don't have that information in front of me but I would I probably want to say probably within like I want to say five years we'll probably have something like that rolled out and a question from Isaiah yeah are there any an in turn internship opportunities within the CDCR library system you know that was actually brought up I think uh was it Kim and I were talking about that you know about some internship opportunities and I'm gonna follow up with that I haven't had an opportunity but we're gonna we're gonna try and we're gonna try and figure you know figure out what might be available there's been a kind of a hurdle with some of the internship opportunities because of some of the liability issues because when you're working around inmates you know because we're all working there you know we have certain protections but if you're an if you're an intern that may or may not exist so that's kind of been the challenge there but I'm gonna follow up and and see if something like that could could occur it's just gonna be above my level unfortunately Isaiah once we do find out we'll make that information available to the students thank you any other questions I have a question Matthew as I was listening to you describe your day and what you do have you ever felt threatened in your job the only me personally no I've never felt threatened I'm not gonna say and maybe that's just my communication style I tend to be I tend to try and de-escalate things verbally that's one thing I I feel like I've been very successful doing there have been some library staff that have been threatened one thing that I will put is when we come and do our our work area we have what's called a personal alarm device or a pad it looks like a it looks like a little looks like a little like garage door opener but if I were to if I've needed to hit you know if I have to hit that and I've had to hit it once in my career it wasn't anything for me it was something that I observed to fight when I hit that within about 10 seconds you've got a a cavalry of people that are coming a cavalry of officers to come address that situation so in some ways working working in the prison is is is is safer than working in like a public school right interesting do we have any other questions okay I work in an adult work in adult at in a county jail is being in prison similar I've talked to some I've had some colleagues that have worked in mostly in juvenile halls but they've worked in some other places in other correctional facilities there's a there's a lot of similarities in some ways I think the major the major difference that I've noticed is that in some of the county jails they didn't have as many resources as some of the state prisons do we actually have we actually have a lot more programs than than they were used to to working with probably just because of funding sources so in some in some ways they they got a lot more resources working for the working for a state prison than they did working for the county that was just my experience okay well thank you so much Matthew for sharing this information with us it's fascinating to me and it's something that I had never considered before but what a great way to get your career started if you're having a tough time finding a way into sort of launching your LIS career and then like happen so often in your career you never know when you might fall in love with it and realize this is exactly what you're interested in so thank you to Matthew this session has been recorded and we will let you know when it's available for viewing thank you all for attending and I hope you have a great rest of the evening