If you are attending the ALA Annual Conference this year, please join us for a discussion on library services and incarceration on June 25.
More information is available here.
Category: Publications, etc.
It was an honor to be this year’s Augusta Baker lecturer, and to have my work set within her tradition of advocacy and truth-telling. Her lifelong commitment to Black representation invited Library Science to reflect on its own shortcomings while also building resources, practices, and spaces for real people along the way. I hope that my own efforts can follow her lead in making actual change in the world, and can truly increase library services and information access within carceral facilities.
Here is a recording of my lecture–
My slides and a few other resources, along with the recording, are available here.
I am extremely grateful to Dr. Nicole A. Cooke, the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair at the University of South Carolina, for inviting me, the coordination and events team at USC who have made this event possible (go #TeamBaker!), and the staff at ALA Editions for their promotion of this event.
Library Services and Incarceration is now available for purchase through ALA Publishing. If you’d like a copy, please order it at https://www.alastore.ala.org/lsai.
Please see the press release at https://www.ala.org/news/member-news/2021/11/library-services-and-incarceration.
A book is a hefty endeavor; I am so grateful for everyone who supported this process (and me!) along the way.
Chelsea Jordan-Makely and I have been collaborating to locate information about academic, public, and special library services for people who are incarcerated or in reentry. Today, our article summarizing these services–Outside and In: Services for People Impacted by Incarceration–went live through the Library Journal website. It will also be available in print later this month.
We doubt that we’ve located everything, and can’t wait to find out about other libraries providing books, programs, or other library services for people who are incarcerated or in reentry. That’s why we’ve teamed up with the Library Research Service at Colorado State Library to create a survey about this type of service!
Academic, special, and public librarians and staff are encouraged to respond.
You can access the survey at Library Services and Incarceration.
My forthcoming book, Library services and incarceration: Recognizing barriers, strengthening access (published by ALA), is now available to pre-order. The book will be available in summer 2021. You can order it directly from ALA at https://www.alastore.ala.org/lsai.
I’m so thankful to the ALA team for this beautiful cover and for making the book a reality. Special thanks to Rachel Chance, my acquisitions editor, for her endless support for the book and for library services to people inside of immigrant detention centers, jails, juvenile detentions, and prisons.
An in-progress chapter from this book is available (for free!) here.
Dr. Jeanie Austin 