About the Prison Committee – pdf brochure

Here is a downloadable/printable brochure about the Greater Edmonton Library Association’s Prison Committee and our work. I have made a link to it from the right-hand column as well so it remains easily accessible.

Thanks to the committee members who presented at ALC! I heard the presentation went really well.

Book Club – first meeting scheduled!

As some of you know, Kirsten, Laura and I went to the prison over lunch last week. We’ve set a date for the first book club meeting! It will be on Saturday, May 16th, at 10:00 am. This will be a very casual meeting so we can discuss what we want to do, how often we want to meet, etc.

Is anyone else interested in coming to the first meeting? Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Kathee (the new librarian) mentioned that the women would like to read an Oprah book of the month book – does anyone have any suggestions or favorites? (Tara and Jocelyn mentioned at our last meeting that the Strathcona County Library has book club packages. I think this is a great idea. What do you think?)

Feel free to call me or email me at work!

Tanya

Meeting Notes, April 14th, 2009

Notes—Meeting with Cathee, Tuesday, April 14, 2009.

Library needs:

Magazine covers—Liz FL will bring these (she discovered a stack of basic matte plastic covers recently)

Labels and label protectors

Dewey cataloguing key. Cathee needs assistance cataloguing the non-fiction. (Didn’t we have something like this?)

Specific collection requests:

The Kite Runner

Book of Negroes

Ken Follett, Pillars of the Earth and World Without End

Wicked, Twilight

As well as:

Graphic novels

First Nations material

“Cultural” books (books about other cultures)

Healing, addictions, psychology non-fiction

Knitting and crochet books (there is one crochet book that is missing and everyone’s been waiting for it to reappear)

Any book with the Oprah label (they are very popular)

Additional Notes:

Cathee would like to move all the law books from the non-fiction section to somewhere else so that all the other non-fiction is together. I know this is something we’re working on.

Cathee wants to register borrowers and search by borrower’s name. I’m not familiar with the system yet. Can this be done?

Cathee asked about weeding. I said if they are really damaged (i.e. pages torn, covers ruined), delete them. For all the others set aside for now and we can talk about this. I told her this would be covered in the policy that the committee is working on.

Cathee is very keen and very nice. I think she’ll be great to work with.

Next steps:

I’m going to get Cathee a list of Oprah books so she can check off what the library already has (and hopefully we can supply what is missing.

Reissue notices about Storybook program and Book Club because of the long gap between Megan leaving and Cathee coming on board. This was Cathee’s suggestion.

Written policy. Cathee was very glad to hear we’re working on this. Missing books are a problem, and she’d like circulation and collection guidelines to work with.

Federal Prison Library Survey

Kim Rempel from William Head Institution Library is trying to distribute a library survey to federal prison libraries. (He hasn’t had much luck with Edmonton Prison for Women – he was told that inmates are running the library.) Since I am the only member of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) Prison Special Interest Group (along with Kim), he’s asked if I could either do the survey or get someone to do it. The results are going to be presented at the Libraries in Canadian Prisons session at the CALL annual conference this May in Halifax. I will also be there.

Anyhow, here is the letter from Kim and the survey. Tanya, Laura and I are going to the prison tomorrow so we could fill out the survey ourselves with Cathee (the new prison librarian) unless someone else would like to do it.

federal-prison-library-letter

kims-prison-library-survey-final