 Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for a session on law library services for incarcerated people. This training is part of San Francisco public libraries, jail and reentry services departments, Mellon Foundation funded work, expanding information access for incarcerated people. Other videos in this series cover topics like library and information science education that incorporates library services for people who are incarcerated public library services for incarcerated people reentry services through libraries and more. All videos in this training are made available on the jail and reentry services YouTube channel through San Francisco public libraries YouTube. And you'll also find a link in the video description to a transcript of this video, as well as to the American Library Association's learning management system. If you'd like to receive a certificate for viewing this training for professional credit, you can go to the LA learning management system which is linked in the video description on the YouTube channel. And view the training there, you will have to sign up through alias system, but you can receive that certificate for free. And there I will stop and turn to Darnell apps to speak a little bit about his experience with library services inside. I'm Darnell apps a second year JD Canada law school and I also serve as a board member for the Cornell prison education program. Prior to law school, I worked one in 15 years as a prison law clerk, where I assisted incarcerated pro se litigants with criminal and civil litigation. The library is in New York State where I serve my prison sentence a governed by directive 4483, and they basically consist of a law library supervisor which is often a corrections officer, and a group of trained incarcerated law clerks law clerks are required to have a GED or a high school diploma, and they also must satisfy a docs administered legal research course, which is taught by the incarcerated clerks. Well, the law libraries in New York provide access to both print and digital collection and includes primary and secondary sources, treatises reference materials and directories the law library also provides access to typewriters and terms in a digital collection, the law library provided access to a modified version of Westlaw Edge, which is nearly identical to the database Westlaw database that I use now as a law student. Generally request to attend the law library I mean in writing on what's called a law library slip, and it typically takes about 48 to 72 hours before your request is processed. On average, if you submit a request to attend the law library every day, you'll be lucky if you see the law library for three hours each week. You're talking about in the prison I was at five points it was a population of 1500, but the law library only had the capacity for about 20 people, not including the law clerks. So, you know, scarcity or lack of, you know, access to the law library was always a problem. Now for someone who was a law clerk you pretty that was your job so you were there every day so you had uninterrupted access to the law library for most in the general population. And for some people held in special housing units which a solitary confinement or administrative segregation, having access to legal materials was a great challenge. I also worked as an IGRC representative which is a elected grievance representative for the general population within the prison system, where I worked as a law librarian, and one of the biggest grievances was the inability to get to the law library. And deadlines, you know, the courts are quite strict when it comes to enforcing those deadlines, seen horror stories of, you know, someone not being able to get to the law library to file a federal habeas petition, which they have one year to do from the time their sentence becomes final, and because they could not get to the law library and have access to the template they needed to submit to the federal district court and, unfortunately, their federal claims were not heard. So, access is a huge problem. In New York specifically, I will say that, you know, digital literacy can be a challenge. But some folks who've been incarcerated for quite some time the shift from print of print collection to mostly digital collection was quite abrupt when New York negotiated its contract with Thompson Reuters. And some people just didn't have who have been incarcerated 15 or 20 years didn't have access to computers, but yet were asked to do their conduct their research on these databases so that sometimes is a challenge and it requires, you know, a group of law clerks there that are really understanding and empathetic about the needs of the folks inside that facility and and are responsive to those needs and helping people get to where they need to be in terms of their cases or whatever research they might be working on so I will say digital literacy is a challenge and also the time that you spend in the law library is so limited you might have an hour when you go there. Some of the legal materials you need to read through a quite dense. If you see a law review article on Westlaw that you want to read, and it's 50 pages, you might not be able to get through the whole thing in an hour. You can but for some who need to, you know, comb through dense legal jargon it could be a challenge. And it's important to be able to take those materials back to your cells in order to closely read them and in most cases you have to pay to have materials printed from these databases 10 cents per page so if you're talking about a 50 or 60 page law review article. That's going to cost someone five to six, six dollars and you know that's, you know, somewhat of an expense for someone who's incarcerated it has no means of earning income. So that can be a barrier as well. It's, and you generally cannot take books out and bring them back to your cells or if you wanted to look through the habeas corpus checklist or you wanted to comb through. You know, the United States code and particularly, you know, particular section of that, you can't take it back to your cell all research needs to be done within the limited time, and you have in the law library. So that too can be a challenge. And you know what the law library for me is someone who was a law court. And that's really where I found my sense of purpose in assisting others who had difficulty navigating the judicial system. And it's really what spurred me to go to law school the wall library was a place where I learned before I even had access to a post secondary education because tuition assistance. The Pell Brands had been rescinded, both by the federal government and at the state level by the Pataki administration so after I earned my GD. You know, that was pretty much it the highest level of academic, the highest level of educational attainment that was available in a little library for me and for many others became a kind of university. Where we studied when we read Supreme Court opinions and we helped friends of ours get out of prison, who didn't have representation and so these were kind of litigation shops in some prisons, where you had a group of clerks that worked collaboratively to really help those who were most need of of of legal assistance and in that way the law library had a good purpose and served a good purpose while I was inside. So with that, you know, I will say there, you know, not many states can dedicate for instance where I'm at right now they don't even have law libraries, they provide legal assistance through a civilian but the incarcerated population does not have access to legal resources in the way that we had in New York, there's no physical law library. I can't imagine a system where anyone could be self sufficient or help, you know, find the kind of help that they need in getting their claims heard when they have access to quality legal resources and have to rely on a civilian employee of the Department of Corrections to kind of bet and screen their claims before they even allow them to have access to certain materials so I think law libraries are important. I don't think the alternative that the Supreme Court gave in Bounds v. Smith is of providing of prisons providing civilians having civilians assist folks with their cases is is a viable option. For the reasons just stated, what's going on in Connecticut but so I believe in the power of self advocacy and the power of, you know, teaching others passing paying it forward. And, you know, that's what I did as a law librarian and, you know, I hope others continue to do the same. Thank you so much for highlighting some of the real profound barriers that people experience when they're trying to access the law and legal information inside, including things like where people are housed or time in the library. You know, whether libraries are staffed. You also, I just want to underline the point that you made about the importance of a law library as a space in which people can come together, and the kinds of networks of care and support that you and your colleagues developed while you were inside. So inspiring and profoundly important and also always a testament to the real need for there to be more access and more services and more support for library services for incarcerated people. So now I'm happy to highlight some of the amazing services and programs that are available for some people who are incarcerated. As we move to our next set of speakers. Hello, I'm Diane Rodriguez. I'm the assistant director of the San Francisco law library. I've been a law librarian for approximately 27 years and in my current position for about eight years. The law library is the oldest law library in the state of California. It's also the model for which all other California County law libraries are based. I'm also the immediate past president of the American Association of law libraries, also known as double a double L. I was honored to serve as the American Association of Law Library president from July 2022 to July 2023. Double a double L is the only national professional association specifically for legal information professionals. And while double a double L's overall mission is to support the growth and cultivation of the legal information profession. Advocacy for access to justice through access to legal information and materials is one of the five goals of the association's strategic plan. Advocacy includes outreach education and collaboration to fellow information professionals and the public. I'm going to review what law libraries offer and how they can help everyone, including incarcerated patrons answered introduce a tool you can use to find legal information and local law libraries. While many public librarians may be familiar with law libraries not everyone in public law libraries often suffer from a common problem. Many patrons don't know law libraries exist until they actually have a legal problem. People are often intimidated and overwhelmed by the law, and many people can't afford a lawyer. In San Francisco, our Superior Court judges report that 80% of civil cases they hear are self represented. But how do people learn to self represent themselves? The patrons have no idea they can use a public law library and learn to handle some legal issues themselves. They can learn to research and understand the law and the legal process and get expert guided help to the law and the legal system. There's a lot to know about law libraries, which vary in collections, focus and public services. There's generally three types of law libraries that are open to the public. There's general public law libraries, which are open to all serve the public, including incarcerated patrons and the legal community. Some examples of basic public law libraries are the law library of Congress, your state law library, and sometimes county law library. There's also government law libraries, which tend to focus on their own special area of the law and the staff of the agency or court while providing access to the public. Some examples of government law libraries are the United States Environmental Protection Agency libraries, Federal Circuit Court libraries, and local courts also sometimes have public libraries in their courthouses. Then there's academic law libraries, which are connected to law schools. There's both public and private university law libraries, and they vary depending on their own policies and procedures, whether or not they are open to the public, but many of them actually have clinics and that are available to the public. So it's always good to check with your local law school and see what they offer. There's also private law firm and corporate law libraries, but those are generally not open to the public. Why law libraries? Now, many public libraries offer some legal information via government documents such as state and federal code and legal self-help books. However, public law libraries offer professional expert law librarians. We offer legal materials in a wide variety of reading levels and formats, both primary sources such as codes, regulations and cases and secondary sources or practice guides that interpret those primary resources. We offer legal forms. There are so many legal forms to choose from free access to extensive legal databases such as Lexis, Nexus and Westlaw. We host clinics offering free legal assistance on a variety of topics. We provide referrals to local legal service agencies if needed. And we also offer programs and classes on legal topics and research. What can law librarians do for you? We provide expert legal information assistance. And there is a distinction between legal reference and legal advice. And while many of our librarians do have a JD, they cannot practice nor give legal advice, but we can teach legal research skills via in-house and virtual programs. We recommend authentic and appropriate legal materials to help patrons understand the law and legal issues and how to represent themselves at levels ranging from beginner to advanced. And why do I mention authentic? Well, there's a surprising amount of unreliable and outdated legal information on the worldwide web and law librarians know what is vetted and reliable. We're experts in navigating federal, state and local legal resources. Every jurisdiction is different with a different court system, different codes and different procedures. We can recommend the appropriate legal resources to help with your specific task. We collaborate with and provide referrals to local service agencies, court self-help centers, university and nonprofit clinics, including incarcerated services and the entry clinics, and local bar association attorney referral services when those are needed. We often connect to local agencies too, such as the city attorney or the local district attorney with knowledge on how expungements and other local practices work. Law libraries offer both direct and indirect services to incarcerated patrons and their families. Indirect services generally consist of questions via the U.S. mail or phone calls from incarcerated persons directly from the jail. These are really big challenges to working indirectly with inmates. Some law libraries have page limits and other limitations per response. Legal information can take time writing back and forth. The reference interview about a legal question can take a really long time via letters. And we can't call people back in the local county jails. We do offer many direct services and my colleagues Liz and Kat will really get into that in their discussions coming up. In my general county law library, we often encourage patrons to send family or friends to research on their behalf. That way we can work directly with them to find the appropriate information, resources and make referrals. Many law libraries also offer remote resources and guidance so people don't have to take time out of their precious day to come in to handle these matters. And again, we have familiarity with common legal needs of the incarcerated patrons such as expungement, CD trial request and family law issues. But how do you connect with these law libraries and to get these resources? Well, I'm really happy to tell you that there's a free tool for that. The American Association of Law Libraries built a new tool to help. The AAWL online information resource, also the OLIR, was created last year. As AAWL president, I appointed a special committee to research and build this tool created by the advancing access to justice special committee and launched in July 2022. It'll be continuously updated by AAWL members. All information included are free resources vetted by expert librarians. It's intended for information professionals and the public. Anyone can easily locate free legal materials for U.S. states, jurisdiction, U.S. territories, U.S. federal government and Canada. You can also locate public law libraries near you, and it also indicates which law libraries provide services to the incarcerated. You can find this tool in two ways. I have two links listed here. One is to allnet.org, the homepage of AAWL where this resides. You can find it on the homepage. You can also get to its contents directly with the bit.ly slash AAWLOLIR link. What does it contain? This tool contains these primary legal resources for each jurisdiction with live links to the official resources themselves. While you might be familiar already with legal materials, I'm going to review each of these categories for those of you who might not be. Session laws are the pending and final bills working through the legislature. Statutory codes are the laws of each state or territory organized by topic. Registers are the working draft of pending changes to regulations. Administrative codes are those regulations and court opinions are the official published opinions of that state or territory. In addition to those official links, the following information is really important to legal researchers to determine whether legal resources are considered the official resource. Whether this resource is authenticated by the government, is the publication officially preserved for historical and future youth? Is it digitally preserved? Is it in print only? Is the publication copyrighted or in the public domain? Each has a jurisdiction adopted the Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act, also known as UELMA, which is a uniform law that ensures authenticity, preservation, and permanent public access to official electronic legal materials. Universal citation indicates whether there are universal citation rules for judicial decisions, statutes, and administrative materials. Each document includes information about finding your local public law library, as well as information about which ones provide services to the incarcerated. So using California as an example, you can see that each publication title is a hyperlink to the resource. So under publication titles, all those light blue titles are links, live links. Code sections are provided to show which official, if the official legislation providing authenticity when available. Copyright is important. Is it in the public versus the private domain? As an example, you can see here on the bottom row that California's administrative code is actually owned by Thompson Reuters, also known as West Publishing. That's right, California doesn't own its own administrative code text. Looking at page two for California, we can see that California has adopted UELMA, the Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act, which ensures the online version is the official version of the code. It also includes a listing of public law libraries in the state. In this case, a link to the California Council of County Law Libraries page where you'll find a listing of all the California County Law Libraries and their home pages for more information. The last column on the right lets you know whether those libraries provide legal services to the incarcerated. And an example here, you can see that the California Wittgen State Law Library does provide services to the incarcerated and patrons can inquire via phone or email directly. Guam is a great example of a U.S. territory listing. U.S. territory law can be tricky to understand and to locate, and yet here it all is with details in a really handy format. Jumping to the public law libraries page in Guam, we can see that there's actually a public law library in Guam. There's direct contact information provided, and you can see that legal information services to the incarcerated are provided in Guam. The OLR also offers legal authoritative federal and Canadian resources. Although Canada is our next door neighbor, many people don't get the Canadian legal system and their publications are often a mystery to most Americans. In addition to links to primary federal legal resources has indicated here on the federal page. Page two of the federal resources provides vetted links to authentic trusted resources for federal legal information and health. These links can be considered a master directory to authentic federal legal resources. With the hot topic of tablets for the incarcerated on the horizon. I think this would be a welcome bookmark or feature for legal research for everyone. And lastly, I'd like to share more contacts to local law librarians. Double A double L chapters are a great way to locate local legal information expertise. Some states have multiple chapters such as California, which has northern and southern California chapters and other states are grouped into region. But it's a wonderful way to connect with your local librarians in your area to find out how you can get assistance with your legal information questions. When in doubt, reach out. This link provides a link to all the chapters in the nation, and so you can find one near you. And I highly recommend contacting your local law librarians to collaborate on legal questions of any kind, including finding out how they can help you with questions with the incarcerated patrons. Thank you. And let me know if you have any questions about any of this. Hi, I'm Liz repi from the Minnesota state law library. And I want to talk to you today about our law library service prisoners program. A little bit of background and history of the program. It's been an operation for over 30 years and to my knowledge is completely unique in the country there's nothing really like it being offered anywhere else. It started out in 1984 as a pilot program between the state law library and the Minnesota Department of Corrections. And I wasn't back. I wasn't in the state law library back then but things obviously went well because it was approved by the Minnesota Supreme Court and the Department of Corrections to move forward with having an interagency agreement with between the two agencies. And the first interagency agreement was back in 1986 to give you an idea of what what this costs. Our fiscal year 2223 total budget is up on the screen there. And I do like to talk a little bit about where the money comes from that funds this. People who are in prisons aren't always the most sympathetic group, perhaps for a tax taxpayer dollars to be spent on. And so I do like to just let people know that the money that funds this program actually comes from fees that the inmates pay when they are in prison. So things like if a person is going to buy something at the commissary there is a markup and part of that that markup goes to the programming budget. Similarly if somebody wants cable. There is part of that fee that is paid that goes to the programming budget and so our, our agreement is paid out of the funds that are in that programming budget. So do see pays us we give them a bill every month, and they pay us for most of the costs of the program. Everything from the photocopier cost us office supplies the postage that we incur to mail things to the prisons. All of the salary and benefit costs for our staff phone costs, and we used to also budget in for mileage because before coven. Our librarians would drive to each of the eight prisons every month and visit one on one with the folks who wanted to meet with the law librarians. We stopped that in when coven hit, and we have not picked it up again, and probably will not just because of cost and security for the prison both for the prison to have, you know, outsiders coming in, and then just safety of our, our librarians. So, the staffing for the program includes two full time law librarians apart, half time librarian, a point to five clerk. And our head of public services supervises the librarians in the program. And the, the all of the staff that are part of the program are considered state law library employees. They are on the same salary scale they get the same benefits that all of the rest of us do so. It's, it's their, their state law library employees is just that their funding comes from a different place. The program assists anybody who is what they call under jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections. And so most of the people that are getting services from the program are housed in one of the eight state prisons in Minnesota. We also assist people who are under jurisdiction but are housed elsewhere so some of these folks might be in a county jail, and some people are housed out of state for their own safety, a little bit more about the program. And so many people make up, make a request to us, and we get them legal information, and they have various ways of doing this. As I mentioned before we no longer meet in person with people at the prisons, but they can call. Write out what's called a kite and submit that to the prison and that's just kind of a service request and internal service request. They can send a letter directly to us. And I'll just mention that the mail if an, if an incarcerated person sends us mail. And then also likewise when we mail things back to that person that is considered special mail, and it is not opened and reviewed by prison staff the way other letters would be coming into somebody who is housed in a prison. The other option that people have is to sign up to have a zoom meeting with the law librarian. This is new. This is something that we got going because of COVID and the lack of in person visits. We don't have all of the prisons on board yet, five of the eight are doing the zoom visits. And we hope by the end of the year to have the other three up and running. There is some difficulty sometimes with, you know, what has to happen is that a prison guard has to take the, the incarcerated person from their housing unit to the place where the zoom computer is at a particular time because they do have an appointment slot with the librarian. And so there's been some difficulty in getting everybody on board with that new duty, but we're, we're hopeful that we'll be able to have that service available to everybody by the end of the year. So what we provide to people, the state law library is the largest, second largest legal collection in the state next to the U of M. And so, you know, our collection has to support the research needs of the courts. So we have a large collection, both print and online, and our law librarians can use anything in our collection to answer requests from the people who are submitting requests for information. We will not pay for something that is not in the collection, but anything that is in our collection or that is freely available on the internet we will provide. And so these are things like, you know, case law statutes, court rules, articles, sections from legal treatises or practice materials, court forms, copies of appellate briefs, addresses for agencies or attorneys or the court, things like that. Now, the prisons do provide, they do provide some resources. So each of the prisons has a library. It's just not a law library. That's what we're providing. What we do give them every year is a list of what we consider to be a core collection that each prison should maintain. And the core collection includes a lot of the state materials that people in prison might need to be consulting, like the state statutes, state court rules, legal dictionary, legal research books, things like that. Some of the more commonly requested court rule or I'm sorry, court forms will be available in the library from the prison librarian. And then they also do have a subscription to Lexis, the Lexis correctional product, which would be available in the library. You know, there are some limitations to that in something that Mr. Epps mentioned when he was speaking about digital literacy and not everybody who is incarcerated is really going to have top notch legal skills. Or I'm sorry, technical technological skills. A lot of people are not going to know kind of what the right words are to construct a search online. So there are some limitations, but it is a resource that's also available. There are a few things that we do not provide because the DOC asks us not to. One of those is anything from the uniform commercial code or the UCC. This is tied to sovereign citizens. And I won't go into explaining all about this but if you Google it, you can, you can find out what they, you know, kind of things they use the UCC for. And typically it's creating kind of bogus legal filings that don't have a basis in real law. But for some reason, they're often connected to the UCC. And so the DOC does not want us to provide that information to people. DOC policies, they also prefer that incarcerated people go directly to the DOC for those just so that they know they're getting the most current policy that we wouldn't necessarily have access to. And then lastly, they don't want us to provide anything from the diagnostic and statistical manual, which is a manual used to diagnose mental disorders. Some of the challenges that our librarians face with working within this program. You know, literacy is one, not everybody who is part of this group is literate in any language. We also have folks who are English is not their first language and so English is challenging because all of our legal information is available only in English in Minnesota. And there are some folks that our librarians work with who struggle with mental health challenges. And so sometimes they can be a little bit more difficult to work with to communicate with in some, in some instances. People don't always know what to ask for when they're not legally trained and so there's some just kind of deciphering, trying to figure out what they're actually asking for. If the, the legal, the correct legal term is not present in the request. And then lastly, our librarians are not lawyers and they can't give legal advice. And a lot of times that's what people are looking for. And so that can also be a challenge and just kind of bringing people back to the reality that, you know, as librarians we can provide you with resources, but not advise you about how to proceed in your case. I just wanted to show this to you briefly this is the flyer that we put together that is posted in all of the prisons, so that the people there can find out about us they can understand what we do and what we don't do, and how to get a hold of us. And then I thought it might be interesting for you to see what kinds of things people are asking for. So these are the statistics from 2022. I would have probably expected before I came to work at the state law library that most of these requests would be dealing with criminal law. But you can see that there are other things that people are asking for. These are all legal, legal topics, but not all criminal. And the exact citation grouping that is listed there at the bottom. What that means is if somebody is giving us a request for a particular thing I want this, I want the Miranda case or I want this particular federal statute. So things that they are asking for that they don't have access to through the prison. They know exactly what they want. And then lastly, I wanted just to share with you some statistics from the program so you have some idea of how, you know, how big this is how many people take advantage of it. You can see the number of DOC inmates from last year was around 7800. The number of questions answered by our law librarians almost 18,000. The phone calls we saw a big jump between 2020 and 22 obviously because of COVID and the ending of the in-person visits. So the in-person visits ended. And so we were getting more calls. And there was a brief period of time where technologically our law librarians had to work from home and they didn't have a way to accept phone calls. But we were able to work through that with our IT department so that computer phones were able to be installed on their laptops so that they were able to continue to accept phone calls while they were working from home. The video visits that we started during COVID, this is the number that we were able to do in 2022. You can see lots and lots of items sent out to people. And then lastly, the number of people that were actually assisted by the program in 2022. So it's a it's a decent chunk of people who are eligible for the program took advantage of it. And I want to just end my presentation with a note that we got from an incarcerated person to one of our law librarians that, you know, just is exactly what. And so I'll share that with you and I will also share with you my email address. And so if you have any questions about the program, if you want to see any of the documentation, if you want to see the contract itself, I'm happy to share that. All of this is public and I'm happy to provide any answers to questions or documents regarding the program. So thank you. Hello, my name is cat buoy I'm the state law librarian for the state like law library in Oregon. We are part of the Oregon judicial department. And I really welcome this opportunity to talk about a project that we implemented back in 2019. It was a three year project, and it wasn't a one and done. It was, it was intended to be a service, an ongoing, evolving project and we're, we're pretty pleased with the results and or the opportunities and what might be in the future. So, like many law libraries, the state of Oregon law library the saw has always received a steady stream of letters from adults and custody, the AIC asking for assistance. We always responded through paper transactions. And by the time it reached the adults and custody it was too late for any real benefit. The time and effort to respond has also been a burden on a small staff. We receive duplicate requests requests that are difficult to read, interpret, or we are unable to respond because they're requesting legal advice. There had to be a better way. So we started asking questions. All the resources were available to the AIC. I knew that correctional facilities had law libraries but what did that mean. Did they have a law library in every facility. Did they have online resources, where their books, where they updated, how many books, were they the same in every facility were their librarians. What did the staff look like. What did they do with the correctional structure. And how do I start making contacts to find out all of these, the answers to these questions. And why are these questions important. The law requires that people in state custody have access to legal resources to pursue cases related to their confinement. Law libraries can also help people in custody address other legal issues that can increase their chances for stability and success once they are released. Law library resources are very important for people who will be released soon so they can work on custody of their kids divorces from abusers or pending warrants before release. In 2016, I reached out to the Oregon Department of Corrections. They were struggling for answers to, and we're very open to exploring options for providing legal resources mandated by law to the AIC. Communication brings opportunity. I'll keep repeating that. I'm invited to tour the correctional facilities across the state to meet with the administrators, administrative staff, security officers, health care workers, library coordinators, and their staff of the Department of Corrections, and the library assistance, the AIC that are equivalent of paralegals. They can actually help with legal issues with the other AIC. I approached these visits as I would any reference interview, lots and lots of questions. They also had lots of questions for me too. What did I learn from these visits? The populations move around. They don't stay in one facility. Inconsistent resources around the state, out of date resources, and limited resources. So, all facilities had somewhat of a law library, but they were small. These buildings are old. They are, have been modified many, many times. Oregon started out as state mental health institutions, and it was difficult for wiring, for connections, phones, anything, and so they would make do with different areas in these buildings for law libraries. They had no internet. That was huge. Oregon has interstate compacts required access to other states primary resources. So, this means that out of state AIC would be housed in Oregon. And currently, or when I did this, did the tours, they only had Oregon state case law and legislation. And AIC came from another state. They didn't have access to the resources, the laws, the statutes, the administrative rules of the state, and their case of confinement. So, that was a huge issue we needed to address. They had limited time for access to the law library. And AIC had to make an appointment before they could come in. Some libraries only had one terminal for canned versions of out of date resources. At that time, only one vendor offered resources that had to be uploaded to the terminals in the law libraries. This posed a huge issue because you never knew when they were going to upload. If there was a problem with the upload, and sometimes materials were just missing. So, a lot of complaints on that side. Everything done, everything was done with paper transactions, which slows everything down and causes the AIC to miss timelines with the court responses. And when it affected the court, that's when I become interested too, because I am in the judicial branch. There were security issues for interacting with the AIC. The library coordinators had to escort the AIC to and from the law library. In effect, they were security officers on top of being a library coordinator. There was no centralized organization of law library staff. They wore many hats and reported to many different department heads. That was difficult because they were pulled in many directions and what was a priority. They had different bosses. Segregated populations were often left out of access to legal resources required by law. Segregated units deal with disciplinary actions, sometimes mental health. It could be a health reason. But if they had an ongoing case, they needed access to those resources to help themselves. I also noticed that there was a great divide between administrative staff and security officers to completely different types of jobs. It's difficult to understand the concept of helping an AIC when you just had to tackle, restrain, and have maybe a bite mark medically treated. Stress is very high for correctional workers on both sides, both the administrative staff and for the security officers. And you have to take that into consideration when you're building a law library and what resources you use. So, went back, went through everything, and tried to figure out how SAAL could assist. What could we offer? The State of Oregon Law Library receives assessed funding from Oregon agencies based on number of full-time employees. This allows the SAAL to utilize economies of scale when it comes to licensing. That means a small agency with a few legal staff have access to the same online legal resources that a larger agency has. For a little background on what the State Law Library does, who is our patron base? We offer legal resources primarily to the Oregon courts statewide, the Department of Justice, and all of the legal staffs and all of the state agencies. So it's a pretty big job. And how we do that is we pool resources. If a small agency has a handful of lawyers, but they need access to the top resources to deal with the cases that come on their desk. So, I take a license for us tailored to a specific use, say real estate or tax resources. And then the users will be from different agencies, and we pool that in one license. So everyone has access to the top resources without having to worry about scraping up pennies to try to figure out what they can do to address the issues that come on their desk. So using that same model, the SAAL assumed the licensing fees for all of the Oregon correctional facilities. So once where there were just a few books in one facility because it was small and had less money in their budget. The goal was to get a license for all of the facilities, no matter where that population moved. They would always have access to the same resources would not require new training and would assist with the administrative staff at both of the Department of Corrections and for the state law library. No longer saddled with paying for online legal resources, the Oregon Department of Corrections could now redirect the savings to design a secure cloud based internet architecture, which was a good thing because they're the platform they had at the time was failing. The doc info information technical staff spent more than a year building a completely new system. It was amazing to watch it was I think the first in the nation of a cloud based information system. We couldn't really move forward and offer any online resources with a web without internet, the, the book industry, the online legal resource industry, the books are just going away. So they had to have an internet base. So the SAAL could now focus on working with vendors to develop web based resources tailored to correctional institutions. At that time I think I already mentioned there was only one vendor that had a correctional package. It cost a lot of money. There was no way to, to add resources, it was either buy it or not buy it. And at that time it was a canned version, it was not web based, and it had to be loaded on individually to the different terminals. Because of all this work, the AIC play a large active role in the selection and testing of these resources. When I spoke with them I asked them what they needed. What was, what was, what were the problems they were running into currently, and how could we address them. They were hesitant at first to talk they didn't trust that they really had an active role. But I assured them that not only would they assist in selection of the resources that we purchased for the license, but they'd also test the system, and that they would have the opportunity to discuss directly with the vendors. When they were testing these resources. They couldn't believe that and because they were always told what to do in all aspects of their lives. And they couldn't believe that now somebody was listening to them and trying to assist. The cloud based network system and the web based online legal resources were implemented in 2019. So that's a three year plan. It was a pleasure it was difficult. It was true collaboration and we're still we can get to these days, it's becoming better. And we're very proud of it. So how would I describe our remote services. They're consistent. Their uniform online web based legal resources statewide. We've also included the youth correctional state hospital and adult correctional units with this license. The content coverage is for all state and federal primary law with limited secondary resources. We added in the youth correctional and state hospital, because again those populations move around, and we had to include them in the license. They don't use it a lot. But it is used and it is a need and it does satisfy the constitutional obligation to offer these resources and access to the courts. They're the uniform resources they're consistent. It eliminates the need again for additional training training on these resources. It reduces the burden on all of the administrative staff in these facilities, and they all have the same coverage. I'd like to add in that the Department of Corrections has also provided flash drives to the AIC. This takes care of another huge burden when an AIC moves either from another state or to another facility. They used to try to carry boxes of their documents. They would get lost or they would be left behind, again affecting timelines addressing their issues in court. The flash drives they can carry with them. They can add their documents on there. They can edit them. They can interact with the library assistants when they're working on their cases. So also a huge shout out to the library coordinators. I hope they're brought in to some of these discussions and for this presentation because we continue to communicate. I have to address the needs that they run into. It's an environment that I have never witnessed before. And with all of the stress and the extra duties that come into that environment. It plays a huge role in how you provide law library services. It was a true collaborative effort. The leadership worked with ASAL to define the project requirements, identify potential vendors, research and address security concerns and consolidate contracts for a more cost effective solution. It's been a pleasure working with them. This project builds on the Oregon Judicial Department's positive track record of collaboration and technology implementation. It includes the development and successful implementation of Oregon eCourt, a statewide system that expanded digital access to court records, legal information, self help resources and online business processes, including electronic filing of court documents. I hope we can bring access to those court filings and documents soon to the Oregon Department of Corrections. When I first did the tours, I was pleased to be able to witness the first electronic filing to the Ninth Circuit, which led to me being able to meet the head of the technology department for the Oregon Department of Corrections, and led to many conversations on how we could bring internet into the facilities. The service has been well received. The media has been interested, which helps promote the project and helps us continue and improve organizations and other governmental units from around the nation have contacted me to discuss Sol's approach. Preparing the Oregon correctional facilities gave me a different perspective that varied greatly between support staff and correctional officers. We've kind of already talked about that. It's just a completely different world. And as I mentioned before, when I first met with AIC their heads were down. They weren't engaged and not that willing to have a true discussion. When we reached the testing phase of the project reviewing the new system, they started to realize that someone had listened to their input. They literally raised their heads and became engaged, asking many, many questions. It was a powerful moment. And I also have to add in that we arranged for the testing of the resources directly with the trainers of the vendor. They, I let them take over the meeting and the vendors afterward said they had never heard such good questions and were extremely amazed and surprised by the expertise and the knowledge that the library assistants showed in that testing phase. So I think that opened the eyes of the vendors and they talk amongst themselves. And again, that's only going to help develop more and better and varied products that can be tailored to each correctional facility as we learn more feedback. They want more. I'm invited to the Department of Corrections staff meetings to discuss paths of moving forward. As a result of this project, the doc has centralized their law library organizational structure. Before the law library coordinators were many hats and had many bosses. The doc reviewed modified job descriptions and created a new legal and library services manager position to oversee the coordinators, and I've been asked to sit in on the hiring panels for those positions. I consider that a great compliment that they to have watched and listened and seen needed improvement and then acted on it. The library community can be very proud of that. So that was a three year project implemented in 2019. What's happened since then. The vendor pool has opened up just like I wanted and hoped where there was a little competition. We now have choices. We have recently moved to Westlaw. Westlaw did not have a viable correctional package. They now have allowed us more leeway in selection of resources and they're adding more. And the price is negotiable. And that is huge. What we've also just added is a CLE product a continuing legal education. It's called bar books online, and it's offered by the Oregon State Bar. What we did was we gathered the information technology departments from the Department of Corrections, the state bar, and the vendor whose platform, the bar books stands on. They work together the bar books as it stands was designed to allow for links outside into the internet. And so it required development. And again, it was a truly collaborative project. Everybody was on board. They worked behind the scenes, locked it down. It's been implemented, approved, and it is being used on a daily basis. And what the bar books does, it's, it's mainly for attorneys, and it takes an issue, a legal issue and it walks you through it. And it gives a huge perspective. Legal issues are not linear. They can spider out and go in all different directions. And it kind of walks you through that issue sites to resources, regulations, rules, everything. And I think it's going to be a huge benefit for the AIC. We're also working currently with a vendor on developing a product that will offer archived legal resources. It'll be kind of the same scenario where we bring all of the IT staff together which we already have started. And they're working on locking down a product that had a lot of links to the outside internet. Once that's in place, we'll continue that process and hopefully get that implemented and accessible by the AIC. So what have I found after that project? Truly collaboration is the key, both internally in your organization, excuse me, and with all stakeholders. You have to become involved in departmental committees that affect the law library's clients. This can be administrative, policy, regulatory. It can be outside your comfort zone, outside traditional law library committee work, but be proactive. Often I find individuals are very eager to find solutions to the same issues law libraries face. Communication does bring opportunity. I treat the AICs as clients as I do the doc staff. You have to address their needs and you have to listen and explore what they're dealing with before you can can move forward. And that takes a lot of communication and it opens up opportunity. You are brought into other issues that you didn't think had anything directly involved with the project that you've designed. So we continue to meet and touch base and that goes a long way. I highly recommend you reaching out and addressing your current Department of Corrections. And I want to thank you again for the opportunity to speak on this project.