ALA Midwinter librarians “go directly to prison!”

Written by Erica MacCreaigh

On a very frosty evening, January 26, nine intrepid ALA Midwinter attendees braved the cold — and perhaps some trepidation at the thought of razor wire, locked gates, and Erica’s driving — to tour the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility and library.

Diana Reese, Erica MacCreaigh, and Lt. Gary Dolan were joined by academic, school, and public librarians, a corrections librarian, and an MLIS student for a two-hour tour of DWCF’s programs and housing – including the rehabilitative Therapeutic Community unit and the lively minimum security dog training unit –which culminated in a visit to the facility library.

Library Technician Trisha Hansen and two offender library clerks
answered questions for nearly an hour about correctional libraries and
librarianship. The two school media librarians were particularly
interested in the many parallels between school media centers and
correctional libraries, including patron behavior management,
censorship, and the challenges of running a library within a non-library
agency.

Some of the comments from participants:

“I want to thank you and your colleagues for providing me with one of the most interesting experiences I have ever had at an ALA conference. I have been attending ALA since 1976 (almost every annual and midwinter meeting) and there are just a few experiences for me that stand out as being exceptional over all these years. One of them surely is the tour you arranged of the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility during the ALA Midwinter conference.” – academic librarian, Northwestern University

“I was amazed at what you all do and who you do it for. Thanks for the
eye opening moment. I could almost see myself working with you, take
about a true service role!!” – academic librarian, Johnson and Wales

“You can get Triple Crown books for your libraries? Are you kidding
me???” – jealous corrections librarian, Alameda County, CA