Tag: libraries

Access, Incarcerated Adults, Incarcerated Youth, Resources

White Paper on Technology in Carceral Facilities

As part of San Francisco Public Library’s “Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People” grant project, we have recently released a white paper titled “Technology in Carceral Facilities: Trends, Limitations, and Opportunities for Libraries.”

This white paper covers relevant literature published from January 2020 to December 2022. It glosses emerging and continuing trends in the use of technology in carceral facilities. It provides an overview of trends in recent publications in library and information science and similar fields about how technologies inside shape people’s experiences of incarceration and reentry. It closes by highlighting work by libraries that may indicate possibilities for supporting incarcerated people and people in reentry through making library services and programs that utilize technology available within facilities, and by offering some examples of how libraries can support patron’s digital literacy development after they are released.

The white paper is freely available online at

“Technology in Carceral Facilities: Trends, Limitations, and Opportunities for Libraries.”

or through the grant page at

“Expanding Information Access for Incarcerated People.”

Uncategorized

Recent Juvenile Detention Resources

At one point, there was a proliferation of activity undertaken by librarians working with incarcerated youth, some of which is represented in the Library Services for Youth in Custody website in the Internet Archive, and the continuing In the Margins book award.

While engagement with this area of library service seems to have diminished, there are still great–and recent–materials available to support librarians beginning these services.

Two recent publications I’ve come across are Jess Snow’s Outreach Services for Teens: A Starter Guide (ALA, 2020), which contains example related to beginning and continuing library services in a juvenile detention and Kristin Zeluff’s chapter titled “Collection development policies in juvenile detention center libraries” in Dawkins’ Intellectual Freedom Issues in School Libraries (ABC-CLIO, 2021).

It’s exciting to see that librarians are still thinking deeply about these services!

Publications, etc.

Successful Dissertation Defense!

I successfully defended my dissertation – Libraries for social change: Centering youth of color and/or LGBTQ and gender non-conforming youth in library practice – on November 6, 2017 at the iSchool at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  I am honored to have worked with my committee, which included Christine Jenkins (chair), Nicole Cooke (research director), Carol Tilley, Soo Ah Kwon, and Rae-Anne Montague.

The announcement of my successful defense is available at

https://ischool.illinois.edu/articles/2017/11/jeanie-austin-defends-dissertation.

 

Reading, Resources

LGBTQ+ (mostly POC) YA library

I’m proud to announce the current catalog for QTY Treehouse, a drop-in and programming space that provides services to LGBTQ+ youth in Oakland, CA.  Through a generous grant from the American Library Association, I have worked with QTY Treehouse staff to build a meaningful and diversely representative library for youth.  Check it out by going to

QTY Treehouse Library!

This spreadsheet is designed to be searchable by race / ethnicity, sexual orientation, and whether or not materials contain trans or gender non-conforming representations or content.

I’m excited for youth to have increased access to library materials that fit their experiences and understandings of the world, and endlessly grateful to QTY Treehouse for our on-going partnership.