 Okay, welcome back to a big talk from Small Libraries 2017. I'm your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. We have artist 201 p.m. central time about ready to start with our next session of the day. What's it like to work as a prison librarian? I'm with Mary Reem, who's from the Hudson, Huttonsville Correctional Center in West Virginia, which has beautiful weather today. I wish we were all there, I know, but we'll live vicariously through you, Mary. And she's going to be switching gears with us at an academic library right before this. We're going to switch gears and see what it's like working as a prison librarian. I'll just hand it over to you to Mary to take it away and tell us all about it. Okay, thanks very much. I'm just really happy to be here. I started working as a prison librarian about a year and three months ago, and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not. I had a lot of stereotypes and fears about doing that, but I have found that I really enjoy this work very much, and one of my goals here today is to dispel myths and stereotypes into just, you know, promote prison librarianship, because I think it's so much needed, especially right now. Presentation is not turning. There we go. So like I said, I'm Mary Reemey. I live and work in rural West Virginia. There's another librarian that I worked with, and I really like my job. For security reasons, I cannot show you a photograph of my library. My boss would not even let me take a head shot in the library because of security, but I did find this one shot on the Internet, so I figure that's got to be public information. As you can see, we have the beautiful Appalachian Mountains there in the background. Little bit about my background, because as far as I know, there's no kind of formal training and prison librarianship. When I was a grad student at the University of Tennessee, we barely touched on the topic of special libraries, and prisons are classified as a special library, as would be like a museum library. So you can see my credentials, and what I've done, I've had a pretty long and varied career, and I've worked in a lot of different library environments, so this is the first time I've worked in a prison library. I like also trying new experiences. The place where I work is an all-male prison. We have about 1,100 guys. We are classified as a medium to maximum security prison. It's run by the state, it's not a private facility. It was built in 1939. We have a lot of education that's available to the guys. The one that I'm most proud of is we were selected to be part of the Second Chance Pell Grant program that was started by the Obama administration as an experiment. And I'm hoping that the experiment is going to track the gentlemen who are in the program to show a really solid connection between education and lack of recidivism, the guys that reoffend. So studies have shown basically that the more education you have, the less likely you are to continue in criminal ways. And I have lots of critters in my little display here because I like critters, and I'm trying to make it fun because prison library is not necessarily the most fun or interesting thing to talk about. But we are very similar to a public library. We have books and magazines. We have newspapers. We do not have audiobooks, so we're a little limited. We do not have internet. We have a photocopier and printers. We have two full-time librarians. We have 20 part-time workers who we employ as legal clerks, library workers and janitors. And I tell you, I've been there a year and two or three months, and guys come and go very quickly. They get reclassified. They go to lesser security institutions, or they commit crimes and get sent to institutions of higher security. It's kind of like, I mean, I guess you can see it is like prison shoots and ladders. It's kind of sad, but people really do come and go very quickly. The librarian that I work with does this whole interlibrary loan project on his own. He gathers up 912 books last year that he picked up personally and delivered to the prison for guys. So if our 11,000 books don't satisfy their needs, we try and go outside. We're part of the Northern Library Network in West Virginia. And we loan out books for gentlemen all the time. As you can see, our statistics are just crazy. Our circulation stats are something I'm really, really proud of. When I used to be the director at a small public library in rural West Virginia, and I worked in a very similar demographic, same service population, same number of books. My search stats were just a fraction of the 50,000 that we had last year. Maybe we had 2,000 or 3,000 that we'd be very proud of. But the big difference between other libraries and my library is security. It's huge. And it's hard for me to explain to people who do not work in a prison just how kind of extreme the security can be. So I have an example here. Because I work in a medium-maximum security prison, I work with some inmates who have committed some very serious offenses. You can see that there. And these are guys. Many of them have long criminal records. And some of these guys are very dangerous criminals. They can be multi-generational criminals. We have brothers at our prison. We have fathers and sons at our prison. And many of these inmates have committed crimes against women, something I'm kind of painfully aware of every day. So my personal safety, the safety of my co-workers and the neighboring community is my number one goal every day. And we learned that at the prison academy. To qualify for my job, I had to pass a drug test, background check. I had four weeks of orientation. And that's just a picture of our lovely orientation manual with all the policy and procedure. And my first week there, I was like, wow, this is crazy. With all these rules and regulations, this is really excessive and extreme and controlling. But I have a great boss, and she's the associate warden. She has allowed me to ask why every step of the way, because I do ask why a lot. And I've had the rules and regulations explained to me why we have a rule for particular things. And it helps me as a new person coming in to really understand. And since this prison has been around for so long, I'm working with people who for example, my boss has worked at this prison for 30 years. She has a lot of history with this place. So during my four-week orientation, I was there with about 15 other new employees, mostly young guys who want to be correctional officers. And we learned a lot of things, including self-defense and handcuffing. So I could be one of the few librarians in the country who knows how to handcuff a guy. Inmates are huge library users. And there's a lot of reasons they come to the library, some of which I haven't mentioned here. The library is kind of a security risk, because it is one of the few times when guys from different dorms, that's what they call it, different units, can come together to socialize, to make deals, to have their side hustle going on. And there's a lot of underground industry going on in a prison. And I know that those gears are working in the library. And I keep my eyes and ears out, but my main job there is to keep it safe and to be a librarian. So part of staying safe in the library, I work with correctional officers. These are guys in uniforms with pepper spray and handcuffs. We all have radios that we wear. I wear my radio for the eight hours that I work every day. We communicate about when inmates leave the library, when they come into the library, if there's something going on, institution-wide that we all need to know about. We all have earpieces. So the inmates don't hear the radios, but we do. We also have cameras in our library in different places, strategically placed. There's a correctional officer or a CEO who keeps an eye on me. Ideally, the whole time I'm there. I know that's not true, because occasionally they have to leave. But I do feel very safe and secure working in this prison. The policy and procedure, that 1,000-page volume of rules, if you know them, it really does help to keep you safe. It's like knowing the rules of the game of life. You follow those rules. Chances are good. You're not going to kind of, I don't know, have security risks. Positioning is really important. It's probably the most important skill that I learned, and that is literally how to place yourself in relation to the inmates. It also means maintaining a healthy personal space, and it means being hyper-aware of your environment at all times. So when there are inmates in the library and we have a limit of 50 at a time, I'm usually trying to answer reference questions, making photocopies. But I'm also taking my time and looking around and making sure I'm aware of what's going on in the library at all times. So this is kind of my daily routine. This is the nuts and bolts of my job. And one of the hallmarks of Huttonville Correctional Center, the thing that makes it safe, is controlled movement. So ideally, inmates need to sign out to go to the library. When they leave the library, they get padded down to make sure they're not stealing books or magazines or they don't have contraband with them. And they can check out three books at a time. There are typically two to three library calls per day. Every inmate has the opportunity to come at least once a day, unless they're in segregation. Guys are sent to segregation for many reasons, mostly disciplinary. They can also be called administratively segregated, which is kind of a euphemism for they're in danger, so we are segregating them for their own safety. But guys who are in SAG, we have workers who deliver books to them two or three times a week. And for a lot of guys who are there in their cell, which is teeny tiny, for 23 hours a day, they get one hour for REC. Those books are a lifeline. And if they don't get their books, they talk to their CEOs and the CEOs call us and we get them their books. It's not only a form of recreation, but it really, it helps to maintain sanity in kind of a difficult situation, to say the least. So what do I do all day? Good question. This is really the nuts and bolts of my job right here, making copies, answering reference questions, ordering books. This is typical librarian stuff. Even if you're a public librarian, you probably keep an eye on your patrons, where they are in relation to you. I know when I worked in a rural library, our nearest police station was like 45 minutes away. So you're your own line of security as rural librarians. So I'm doing the same thing that rural librarians are doing. Keep an eye on my workers, keep an eye on the inmates. And I also recommend books. I love doing a reader's advisory for guys. So in many ways, I really propose that working in a prison library is a lot like working in a library anywhere. And I'll tell you how. I have some very high maintenance patrons. And I think as librarians, every library, you know what I'm talking about, with the high maintenance patrons, these are people who are very demanding. They have long requests, and they kind of have that I need it now attitude. And the other law of the high maintenance patron is, when one leaves, another one comes and fills that space. I think that is true with every library. So I also have many happy readers, and I'm putting this picture in here of an African-American person who says he loves Jane Austen because one of my African-American workers, who's a young man, indeed absolutely loves Jane Austen. It's one of his favorite authors, along with Nicholas Barks. It made me laugh when I first started working there that hardened criminals love soft, mushy romances. So just like other librarians, like one of the favorite things about my job, I love having interesting and thought-provoking conversations with patrons about everything, about nothing. And in prison, this is super important. There are some really big differences, though, between prison library and other libraries. We really can't talk about our personal lives. And I've worked at libraries and at workplaces, where I generally do indeed keep my personal life to myself. In a small town, if you work as a rural librarian, that's really, really difficult because as you know, everyone knows everything about you all the time. Some of the gentlemen who I work with are really facile con men and manipulators. So again, they really encourage you to keep your personal life to yourself because they can use any information to extort you and vessel you to threaten your family. It doesn't happen a lot, but it's a possibility. And part of being secure is sort of planning for worst case scenario. And where I work worst case scenario stuff, it really does happen. This is one of the big quotes that we heard a lot during orientation. You are not here to make friends with inmates. And as a librarian, I think that it's good to have a personal distance from your patrons. However, like I said, as a rural librarian, that's really difficult. I've worked in jobs where I absolutely became emotionally attached to my regular patrons. The ones who I saw every day, the ones who would stop to chit chat about how their life was going. So I think initially this was difficult for me, but I got over it real quick. We can have cell phones that work for obvious reasons. That's a big taboo item. I don't have a smartphone, so luckily it doesn't really hurt me a whole lot. You're only allowed to carry into the prison what you can fit into a lunchbox, which for me gets hard sometimes. I think I carry a lot of baggage. But we do have lockers in a secure staff building where you can keep phones and other personal items. You can't bring your wallet or any identifying information, only plastic utensils and no Wi-Fi was talking. I was listening to the lady with the very small library in Maine. They said, my library doesn't have Wi-Fi. I'm probably the only library in the country with no Wi-Fi. And I was like, no, me too. No Wi-Fi in any prison library. It's just not gonna happen. One of the things I love is that I do not have to fundraise. As the director of a very small library, fundraising was a huge part of my role for a couple of years. And I really, I enjoyed it, but I didn't enjoy the pressure and the worry for money. Luckily, my boss, the state of West Virginia, the West Virginia Division of Corrections really values libraries. And my budget as a prison librarian is probably about 10 times what it was when I worked at a small public library. So I cannot complain about the funds that I have for buying books, newspapers, and magazines. I don't even have an outside phone line in my office. And that's because my office is within the library, but it's kind of like a little fishbowl that I can lock inside the library in case of something horrible. I can lock myself in, not ideal, but that's kind of the game plan. And in my year and a half as a prison librarian, I've received two personal calls. They really discourage you from having personal calls in the library because inmates can overhear. They can listen. And at first I thought that was really restrictive too, but now I see it actually is very kind of refreshing. When I'm at my job, I am very focused on my job and I'm not worried about my personal life or what's going on with my family. In case of emergency, they know how to reach me and where to reach me, but generally they don't. And I really kind of value that. So this is my way of trying to describe just how secure we are. And here's my little list of things I have to do to get to the bathroom, just to the restroom every day. It's a challenge. It involves a lot of locking and unlocking and locking and unlocking and more of the same rinse and repeat. It's the first few months I worked there were the most difficult because I absolutely hated this. There are many groups and factions inside the prison. I think a prison is a subculture in and of itself, but within that subculture, there are other subcultures. There are gang members, mostly DMI, but I know that we also have Crips and Bloods from Charleston, West Virginia, from Baltimore, Maryland, from Washington, D.C. Our most powerful gang faction within our prison is DMI. And I don't wanna say a whole lot about this gang because they're really despicable. To become a member of Dead Man Incorporated, you allegedly have to kill somebody. I'll leave it at that. Many of our books, this is one of the problems with prison libraries is that our books get graffitied. And this also used to really infuriate and drive me crazy. You know, I think as librarians, we're used to having a certain control over our collection. We know who's checked the books out. We know we can perhaps track down who has torn up a book or cut up a book or spill coffee on an orb graffiti. And our books are flying around so fast, we really do not have time to track who is graffitiing our books. We know we're gang members. We know they're mostly the white supremacists. I'm also not gonna say a whole lot about 1488. You can go look that up. I really cannot say, though, that prison is all bad. Working in a prison has changed me, I think mostly for the better. I'm less judgemental, I'm more tolerant. I have become a great lie detector. I can tell when someone comes to me and says, I hear I have this overdue slip and yet I never check this book out. I can tell whether they're lying or not and it took me a long time to figure it out and now I don't really know how I do it. I can tell when someone or a group of people is up to no good and I call it my spidey sense. I'm sure that you know what I'm talking about. If there's a group of guys gathered around a bookshelf, they look like they're having a very serious important meeting. They're not checking out books. They're absolutely up to no good and so I do my best to sort of just keep an eye on what's happening. There are two important skill sets that I came into prison with that helped me be a good prison librarian. Number one thing is being a parent. I think as a mom, I have a certain amount of intuition about, again, when someone is up to no good, when someone's not telling you the truth, when things are about to get out of hand, when I need to intervene in a conflict, and also having street smarts. I grew up in Baltimore. I moved here from Philadelphia 18 years ago and just being savvy of hustlers and panhandlers and people who will ask me many weird things on the streets makes me, I think, a little less naive than your average person coming in perhaps with a rural background to work in this kind of environment. I've encountered guys like the inmates I work with a lot. So, and also like a parent, my boundaries are tested every single day and I have to say no a lot. And this has been good for me because I think when I was the director at a small public library, I really overworked. I think that I had very large demands for myself. As a one-person librarian, I was trying to do fundraising, raising, collection development, managing board meetings and attending other kind of publicity marketing functions all at the same time. It was a lot. And even though I was part-time, I didn't have the gumption to say no because I was so passionate about promoting the small public library. But working as a prison librarian has taught me to say no and it's taught me my limitations. I can only do so much in one day. But my big thing is as rural librarians, do we not value working with an underserved population? And I think inmates are one of the most underserved populations in the United States today. I know I can tell you that West Virginia is at what I call peak prison. We have more inmates now in the state of West Virginia than we have ever had in our state's history. The United States as a whole is the largest prison, has the largest prison population in the world. And we are the number one prison nation. Used to be Russia and somehow the United States has become number one. The rewards I receive as a prison librarian are sometimes better than a paycheck. I, one of the things that I've done is I've worked very slowly in prison to sort of build, I think, confidence and trust with the gentlemen who I work with. I started a writer's club. We meet every two weeks and for one hour we get to talk about, I just facilitate, I don't do a lot of talking with the inmates, talk about their writing. They talk about creativity. They talk about creative inspiration. They talk about their favorite authors, their favorite poems, their favorite books. They share their writing. They get critiques from the other guys. This has been some of the best hours that I have spent in prison. Recently we held a spelling bee, which sounds a little corny, I know, but this was actually a very fun activity that grown men enjoyed participating in. It was fun. Another program that I started was right before the election, we had a mock election. And my idea was that it's great to have inmates who wanna listen to the news, keep up with current events and at least know the basics of how our political system works. I think that's really important. A lot of states, a lot of cities now allow felons to vote in elections. And I think that's as it should be. I think once you've served your time in prison, your punishment should be over. Another reward that I have is that many inmates have never ever used a library on the outside before. They have never read regularly and they come to prison and it's like you see a gigantic light bulb go off over their head. I'm not saying that they're becoming instant good citizens overnight having read the Hunger Games trilogy. But I am saying that they become excited about reading. It fills their days. It makes the hours pass. It makes an unpleasant situation slightly more pleasant. I'm not gonna say reading is the cure all in a prison situation, but it is certainly one of the few benefits available to inmates in prison. And I'm very proud of our library. You know, like while I hope that the right book or books may change in inmates' life, I am really just happy if a book helps somebody get through the night. You know, I used to have kind of this superhero feeling about being super librarian. You know, handing the right book to the right person at the right time that's gonna change everything and turn them around. But I really kind of have modulated my goals to be a little more modest. And I'm just happy if someone reads a book for the first time or the second time or comes to me and says, hey, I read that Grapes of Wrath book. I really like that book. Or, you know, hey, I read Lord of the Flies. I didn't get it. Let's talk about it. The gratitude and respect that I receive from the inmates is incredibly rewarding. The opportunity to create positive change in an individual just through healthy and positive interactions is abundant. And I had mentioned earlier that a lot of these guys have committed crimes against women. I work in an all-male institution. There's not a lot of women who work there. I would say there's about 350 staff people. You know, maybe 75 to 100 of those are women. But I don't see a lot of females every day. I see a lot of gentlemen every day. And I do feel conscientious that I am there kind of representing as a positive role model as a woman. And just having a positive interaction with an inmate as a female who may be a serial rapist for me kind of feels like a small victory. But I also have to say that working in prison is not for everyone. I was trying to recruit people to teach adjunct college courses this summer at the prison. And I had some very strong negative reactions from people I know that surprised me. But then again, I thought, okay, I'm not surprised. There is a stereotype about prison. And I also kind of bought into the stereotype. I was thinking, hey, I watched Oz. I watched Aren't Just the New Black. So I know everything about prison. It's a horrible place. There's people getting raped constantly. And you know, it's just, you know, why am I doing this? I really was not sure if prison was gonna be a great place for me or not. There is a lot of violence in prison, but I will also say it is mostly inmate on inmate. I see a whole lot of guys with wounds, stitches and black eyes. And one of the first rule of prison is don't trust anyone. And the second rule of prison is don't tell on anyone. So one of the gentlemen in my writer's group last week looked like he had had his face rearranged by like a large automobile. And I asked him about it and he just said to me, don't ask me about it. And in the official write-up it said that he had just woken up that way. And he had no idea how he had received his horrible injuries. And prison can be very depressing. There's not a lot of luxury items. I don't have a beautiful window office. I don't even have carpeting on my floor. It's a linoleum tile floor. There's no, you know, I don't have pictures of my family on my desk or beautiful art reproductions on the walls. There's just very little money for any kind of extras. I don't have money to go to the ALA Library conferences during the year. But I gotta say that I do feel very grateful for what I have. Prison has made me feel very grateful for my freedom. Makes me feel very grateful that I had two parents who raised me, who cared about me because I've listened to many, many, many horrible sad stories from gentlemen from all over the country. And the common theme for many of these gentlemen is just a really hard family life growing up. Things you cannot even imagine. So while some librarians may consider prison librarian a profession of last resort, I can only recommend it. I think that, you know, if you're a librarian and you're out there looking for a job, it's really hard to find a job right now. There's a lot of librarians out there who are looking for a job. I would not cross prison librarian off your list. I'm just saying that while it doesn't get a lot of press, there's not a lot of academic research or scholarship on prison librarianship. I think that it's a really kind of, it's an underserved librarian population. I did start a Facebook page. If any of you are prison librarians or if you're interested in being a prison librarian, you can go to Facebook and look for the prison librarians group. It's a closed group, but you're welcome to join our group. We have conversations about what we're doing at our prisons to be positive in our librarianship. And I, you know, I'm here today trying to sort of recruit people to be prison librarians because I think that it's really important. So that's it, actually, for my presentation. I would like to give a shout out to all the rural librarians who have participated today because I know you're not doing it for the paycheck. And I want y'all to know that I enjoyed listening to your presentations and lightning rounds today, too. So I know I'm ending a little early, but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer those. Yes, Mary, thank you very much. Actually, there are quite a few questions coming in, but that's not a problem. We have, that was very, I, like you had no idea what a being prison librarian would be like. I've only seen the TV shows that you have. I know we do have quite a few of those here in Nebraska, but we haven't really heard, you know, I don't talk to them, no. It is, I see what you're saying is very similar and very different from other types of librarianship and other libraries that people are at. You can see the similarities, but then, yeah, obviously the ways that you have to deal with things differently because of the location and the environment. We've got a bunch of questions coming in, and since we do have a good amount of time here, I'll start with the top one and we'll just go through them here. A question about interlibrary loan. Did you mention you don't interlibrary loan directly to the correctional facility? It's sort of, it is direct in that we have a library card just for our facility and my colleague goes out and checks the books out under the Huttonsville library card and returns with them to the facility. Okay, so they don't get sent right to the library, you've got to go out and get them, pick them up yourself. Is that a security issue or? That's actually my colleague's choice. If we did it the way it was supposed to be done, that the statistic about interlibrary loan would probably be maybe like a 20th of that because guys have to then write a voucher to pay for the book, they have to have money in their account to pay for the book in case they lose the book. And get that money back when the package is returned. But because that is so- It's a central thing, yeah. It's like a bureaucratic acrobatics that you have to go through to get an interlibrary loan book, he has chosen to do it that way. Sounds like a good idea, yeah. And that actually really isn't the way to just mention someone else didn't have a question. Are the prisoners held responsible for any damaged books? Yeah, and the books usually get damaged while they're in segregation and there are these slight gaps underneath their cell doors and typically what the guys do are they break up the books into 20 page sections and they fish the section to like a neighboring cellies in little pieces using thread from their blankets. It's called fishing. They'll fish the pieces of the book to other people and they'll fish the whole book around in little pieces and eventually somebody has to pay for that book. Yeah. Especially if it's Stephen King because it hurts me when it's Stephen King. Oh, is that a very popular thing? Yes, he's very popular. Him and Dean Coons. Yep, very similar. Okay, how often do the segregated inmates get library services? Is it different, what is the difference between the different areas of the prison they might be in? The segregated inmates get books twice a week. So they fill out requests for the books that they want. My workers fulfill those requests and deliver books and pick up books twice a week and I look at the statistics. Our segregated population is one of our major patrons if you could see them as a whole and those guys go through four to six books a week. I have guys who are not in segregation who read 10 to 12 books a week. Okay. What about donations? Do you have a policy for donated books or do you take donations for the collection? Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. It's very carefully regulated by my boss. She wants to know where those donations are coming from and usually only allows us donations from other libraries. So we recently got a big donation from the Elkins Library which is a local public library. We went and picked it up in a van. We delivered it to the prison. The inmates unload the boxes. Those boxes then go into my boss's office and sit for a few days and then she has our drug canines come in and sniff all the books and then it's okay for the books to go into the library. So she is very selective about what donations we take. She wants them to come from other libraries, period. So just not from the general public has to be another library weeding things out or doing something like that. Her concern is inmates receiving items in books sent directly to them somehow. Definitely understandable. What about selection guidelines? Are there certain guidelines of what kinds of materials that are be approved or disapproved? Lists of what you can and can't have? Is that a collection? Yes, that is a great question because as a librarian, censorship is one of my, it's something I didn't want to compromise on as a public librarian, but as a prison librarian, I've had to admit that there are some books I do not want in my library and that I should not have because they can incite violence. So for example, and this is true of prisons all over the country, any prison can have a list of banned books and most prisons do. Some of the books that we are not allowed to get are things like Mein Kampf, The 48 Laws of Mastery, and that's a book about social manipulation. I actually had to get that book and read it because I didn't understand why it was banned. So those two books I get, we can't have anything on like bomb making or the anarchist cookbook. But... Makes sense, yeah. Yeah, you know, there's other books that are banned that hurt me personally, like Sun Tzu's Art of War. I think it's a great strategy book, but the prison officials see that, I think they see the title and they say, oh, war, not good. And they don't allow that book in. So yeah, there's quite a few books. There's also books about the Odinist religion that they do not like, because they're white supremacist tomes, mostly. And they really incite racial unrest in our prison in a very bad way. I can see that, yeah. So the administrators are not, it sounds like what you said about the Art of War, they're not necessarily reading all of these books to decide. I guess they're just, they get a feeling it might get to be a bad idea. Yeah, that one I'm not sure. But I bet if I go back, if I could find somebody from 10 or 20 years ago to say why was this banned, there would be a reason for it. Something happened, or yeah. But then like another series actually that's banned is The Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm not exactly sure why. I think that's more for puritanical reasons. Uh, I'll keep my opinions to myself on that one. Okay. How do you operate during lockdowns or shakedowns when something like that is going on in the prison? Is there a specific library procedures or? That's a really good question too. Sometimes I have to help out with the shakedowns so I have to either go into guys' selves and start, you know, looking for stuff, or I can, you know... That's different for a librarian's job, definitely. Wow. Yeah, I mean, I've also worked security posts. But during shakedowns or lockdowns, I try to stay out of the way, and I stay in the library, and I try and do things like print out shelf labels, create displays for the upcoming months. I really just try and stay busy because there's always something to do in a library. But I also try and kind of... I don't want to get involved. I don't want to be a cop. I want to be a librarian. That's kind of how I feel. Right. But sometimes, because you are a staff member, they have to use you for some of their procedures, obviously. Yes. And ultimately, it's kind of a quasi-military situation. So I report to the warden, but during times of lockdown or shakedown, I kind of report to the shift commander who's a lieutenant. So you said you had certain training to do this. Was that, I assume, as part of the training that anyone who works in the prison at some point would possibly potentially... Yes. You have to be prepared for a prison riot. That's the worst-case scenario. Right. But that's what we train for. It's like learning CPR. Ideally, it's something you never have to use, but you should know how to do it. Mm-hmm, yeah. So a couple of questions here to go together. So you said you were doing other things before this. How did you become interested in becoming a prison librarian? Why did you give that some story that you could share about how you left your previous director position and ended up here? I had a huge conflict with the West Virginia Library Commission with my board of directors. And couldn't stay, could not stay. And I resigned, and I was absolutely desperate. I live in the middle of nowhere. Honestly, West Virginia is as rural as the lady who was talking earlier from Colorado. We are front here also. My job choices are very limited, but I wanted to stay here. I saw the job opening and interviewed on a large. I never thought I would get it, and I was shocked when I got it. And still, I kept telling myself, well, if I don't like this, I'm just going to quit in a month or two. But I really liked it. It really grew on me. And I thought, this is important work. I definitely got that from a lot of your presentation, yes. Once you get in there, you realize that you're making a difference. Right, that's right. And your user's lies, yeah. Another person here who actually is a prison librarian says, I found out being a prison librarian was what I wanted to be when I grew up at the age of 45, they said. Yeah, yeah. Yep, it's a great job. Well, I will also say it typically pays more than a public librarian. It typically pays more than an academic librarian as well. I can see that that would be something potentially very, but I can see why, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I thought about that part of it. A couple of the more procedural questions have come in here. Do you have an opportunity to do any programs in the prison library, the programs, events, type things? Judy, you mentioned something about display. Yeah, I try and do displays for various months. So one of the first things I did when I started working there was a display for Jewish American History Month, in part because of my background. And also, I like to tweak white supremacists. It made me very happy to show the famous celebrity Americans who are Jewish, and they didn't know it. And it was very shocking for a lot of guys. Very informational. I also just, we are celebrating African American History Month this month. And next month, to stir things even up more, you're going to celebrate Women's History Month. Awesome. Yeah. You're opening minds is what you're doing. Yeah, I guess you could say that, hopefully. And if not, it makes me very happy. I am very satisfied. But like I said, I also have a writer's group, and we had a mock election. But I really have not had, I don't think I've been there long enough to really develop more programs. But I do have more in mind in the works. Another just basic really simple procedural question I never really thought about, do you use book cards to get things around? Or is there as far as like in the actual units in the dorms? No, the guys come to the library. You don't bring anything out to them. They have to come to you. That's right. The only books we deliver are to segregation, and my workers take like two giant post office bins on a dolly. OK. Yeah. And do any of the staff working at the prison use the library there? Or is it just for, is it restricted to only two prisoners, or can anybody? That's a great question too. It is a staff and inmate library. And however, I only have one staff member who uses it besides me and the other librarian who I work with. It is sadly not a place that is full of readers. That's good. The inmates read a lot more than the staff. But if you're a correctional officer, you're not allowed to read on duty. That would make sense, yeah. While they're there, if they're on duty, they're supposed to be working, yeah. Would they be able to even check things out and take them home with them anyways? Or is it just if they wanted to? So that could be a resource for them if they'd be off site. That's cool. The other person here's librarian said, great presentation can tell that you actually really love your job. And reentry is the big push here in Virginia. He's also from Virginia. The library can be a positive influence in this area in the future for them when they're on their way out of the prison. Yes, yes. We help guys find halfway houses. We help them. I just helped a guy find a job out in North or South Dakota when he got released. I helped a guy find a halfway house in Washington, DC. I even gave him a printout of the subway map. I'll do whatever I can to help somebody who is starting over again because it's really, really hard. And a lot of the guys who I work with have been in prison for between 10 and 30 years. These are guys that have never seen the internet. So I try and do what I can to make their landing a little easier. Right. Because felons are so demonized in our society. That sounds very similar to a lot of things. Public libraries work was helping people in the similar situations trying to get reestablished. Now, you said there's no Wi-Fi. Is there internet at all in the library, or is that completely cut off? I have internet on my machine in my office. There is no. The inmates are not allowed to use the internet. OK. So here's a good question that just came in, too. We're about going to wrap up here to just let everybody know because there's about 10 of about where to get ready into our next session. We have a few last questions you want to toss to Mary. Get them typed in there. Do you have anything that will be, now you've been talking a lot about recreational use of the library, what about helping with their cases? Do you pretend, for example, do you have Lexis-Nexis Westlaw, anything like that that they? Yes, I forgot to mention that. We do have Lexis-Nexis. We get all the updates regularly. We have an amazing legal library. We have a staff of legal clerks and legal reps. Our legal clerks are, I get to say, better than most of the lawyers who I have encountered in West Virginia. They are so astute and they have done amazing things in terms of not getting sentences reversed because, again, that's like a stereotype. But they do get sentences reduced. They have successful appeals where guys can have new trials. It is very active and a busy section of our library. And I will also say that there are also a lot of, while I think a lot of the legal activity is healthy and correct, there's also a lot of anger-suing going on, guys who are very unhappy to be in prison, who are suing the manufacturers of their earbuds when they broke. They're very unhappy. They have the tools to be able to sue. They take advantage of that sometimes. But at the same time, that is their right. Yeah, just like any citizen, again, if they want to go through all of that, yeah. All right, well, we have one last comment that just came in from one of our librarians here in Nebraska. Kudos for job well done. I have learned a lot from this session. I might approach our county facility and work closer on outreach with them. I always donate books, but condenses from the library, as you said, but couldn't always maybe do more. Is there anything you'd do to work with the, is there any working with the local public library on more than donating? Or is there anything that they could do for you guys? In some ways, we already do work with the local library because of the grant and aid money. Just having Cottonville Prison in a certain region gives the local library, public library, up the road more grant and aid money as they get to count 1,200 guys. And we also interlibrary loan from them quite a bit. So in return, they also donate a lot of books to us. They're awesome. They'll call us when they get stuff and they're like, hey, we got some Westerns coming get them. Yeah, with extra duplicates. Is that anything that you could bring in anyone from the outside, from the library, obviously, for presentations or book talks or things? Yeah, I have a friend who is a professional poet and he is a professor at a college, so I would like to bring him into my writer's group to say, hey, you can actually be a writer for a living. This is a possibility. So definitely you can partner partnerships with other organizations to come in. That's awesome. Yeah. All right, I think we'll wrap it up so we can move on to our next session. Thank you very much, Mary. That was really interesting. And I learned so much. I'm not a clue. I was so happy when I saw this presentation came in on our proposals. I was like, yes, I totally want to know about this because I am completely oblivious, unfortunately. Yeah, there's not a lot of people. I mean, there are prison librarians in this country, but I think there's probably less than 100 prison librarians. Wow, OK. Thank you for having me. All right, yeah, thanks a lot.