Pub Night Fundraiser a Success!

Thank you to everyone who contributed to making our Beers Beyond Bars Pub Night Fundraiser a huge success! Over 70 people came out for the event and helped us raise $925 through the purchase of event passes and raffle tickets. An additional $550 came in through generous donations, bringing our grand total to $1475. This monetary support will be used to support current programs, including our Book Club, Storybook Project, and Computer Literacy working group, and will also purchase many greatly appreciated books from our library wishlists.

Special recognition goes out to PLRC members who helped plan and promote this event, as well as local raffle prize donors Madison’s Grill, The Ranch Golf and Country Club, and photographer Karen McArthur. We would also like to acknowledge the financial support of GELA and LISSA, who provided snacks for the event. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Fundraiser Book Sale a Success!

Our recent fundraiser over the Mother’s Day weekend was a success. We raised $546.00 for our various projects and garnered some media attention too! Check out the Edmonton Sun article and the CTV news item (starts at about 14:09) covering the event. A big thank you to our volunteers and all those who stopped by to chat and donate to the EIFW library. And thanks to the weather for cooperating–especially on Saturday!

APIRG funding to support the library

Sara and I have successfully applied to APIRG on behalf of ABC Edmonton for a Books Behind Bars project in support of the library. We have received a grant of $670 to be used to buy books for the library and promote the project.

Now to buy some books! We will, of course, be looking to the wishlist, as well as a lists of recommendations from ABC contacts. Kirsten and I have discussed the possibility of buying some reference books.  There’s a bookclub meeting this weekend, so I’ll be able to talk to Cathee about what she thinks would be most useful.

APIRG is also interested in setting up a ‘satellite’ library at the prison. The idea is that they would lend books from their collection to the prison library for an extended period of time and those books would circulate in the prison. This is in discussion stages right now, but I will keep you updated!

Donations of books and supplies

Greenwoods has generously donated 25 children’s books for our Storybook Project. Among these are hard cover picture books, board books, and classics–a really great selection. Thank you Greenwoods!

We also received donations of book card pockets in response to a request made on Jerome-L. Thank you to all of our Alberta colleagues for coming through! The card pockets were dropped off to Cathee along with spine labels and label protectors last week.

Thanks to the Anarchist Black Cross!

On behalf of the GELA Prison Project, I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Anarchist Black Cross Edmonton for the spectacular donation of books!

Some of us met members of the ABC when we attended Vikki Law’s talk about women’s resistance in prisons. They were super eager to help out and came through with the great donation, which included novels from the wish-lists for the library, enough copies of Catcher in the Rye for a book club, and a whole bunch of kids’ books for the story book project.

Thank you so much!

Supporters

hi everyone, just a note that i added “about us” and “supporters” pages to this blog, accessible from the menu on the right. anyone who can post to this blog can also change their contents so– feel free to add and correct any mistakes you find. Tara suggested thanking the individuals and libraries who have been nice enough to support us in our endeavours, which I thought was a great idea. but in the case of individual donations– we should check before we add names to the public blog.

Edmonton Public Library is on there because we have been using their book club kits. Strathcona County Library has lent book club kits and is also a great source of donated material.
-thanks, jocelyn

Happy Retirement Maryon – and thank you!!

On behalf of the GELA prison committee, I want to thank Maryon McClary for her retirement request for donations to our prison library committee! Maryon retired from the University of Alberta Libraries and through the generous donations of her friends, we had funding for our very successful pilot of the Storybook Project.

We conducted the pilot project in May and June where we recorded 11 women who read aloud to their children. We then burned the recordings onto a cd and mailed both the cd and a copy of the book to each child. The project was incredibly successful and we were able to purchase the books because of the donations made in Maryon’s name.
We now have plans in place to make this a permanent project of the committee – starting in September GELA volunteers will meet with women once a month for the readings, recordings and mailouts. The women are SO thankful and very excited about the project.

Once again – many thanks to Maryon and enjoy your well-deserved retirement!

Kirsten

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.

February 17/09 Meeting Minutes

Here are the minutes from our last Prison Committee meeting. Many thanks to Masha for the note-taking! Please read through and make note of any of the ACTION items.

And remember, if you are interested in getting involved in:

• improving the library space / setting up legal materials section, or
• bookclub, or
• storybook project, or
• any other idea you might have

Please let us know!

February 17/09 Meeting Minutes

November 26/08 Meeting Minutes

Thanks to Moyra for taking minutes last night and getting them so quickly typed up and available! And thanks too to Karra for coming out and sharing her knowledge with us. It was great to see so many from FLIF and SLIS at the meeting – thank you Masha for arranging a really perfect meeting room.

If you are unable to read the attached minutes – let me know and I can send them to you via email. Please make note of the action items identified from the meeting.

eifwminutes26_11_20081

Also: Eight of us can commit to once a month as of now. We need to communicate to set up times when we are going to the prison so that people without cars can try and coordinate with people who have cars.

If you are ready to start a project (i.e. bookclub, one-on-one literacy, library visit etc) – go ahead and contact Karra (taitkl@csc-scc.gc.ca ) and start the project. Please let the rest of the committee know (via blog) so that others might help out or catch a ride.

One more thing: Liz Fulton Lyne just completed her Anatomy of a Setup training this week – so that’s one more person fully trained! Excellent!