Grant work continues!

The Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People grant initiative has received additional funding! From the press release

San Francisco Public Library is thrilled to announce that its Jail and Reentry Services program (JARS) has been awarded a grant of nearly $2 million by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This grant ensures continued support for the groundbreaking Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People initiative, which provides a foundation for creating and sustaining meaningful library services for people who are incarcerated or in the process of reentry. The initiative focuses on building libraries’ capacity to provide services to the nearly two million people currently incarcerated and the millions of people who have formerly experienced incarceration. This marks the third time JARS’s nationally recognized, groundbreaking work in the field of carceral justice has been awarded a grant by the Mellon Foundation.

Powered by funds from the Mellon grant, San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) and the American Library Association (ALA) have collaborated on materials that support the professional development of library and information professionals, resources for advocacy, in-person and virtual events and the construction of ALA’s Standards for Library Services for the Incarcerated or Detained. The grant has facilitated greater connections between librarians and information professionals, library students and community members while centering the experiences and knowledge of people who have been negatively impacted by incarceration. The renewal grant term continues and extends this work.

The full press release is available at https://sfpl.org/releases/2024/12/20/san-francisco-public-library-receives-2-million-grant-continue-work-expanding.