Library Tech Confidential

The Globe and Mail’s tabloid-style update on disgraced newspaper magnate Conrad Black’s life behind bars includes the following juicy tidbit (emphasis mine):

[He] has been nicknamed “Lordy” by his fellow inmates, orders around his cellmate, lectures on American history, and has been promoted to work in the library, according to a story yesterday in London’s Daily Mail. [read more]

I couldn’t track down any more details about his duties in the library, though the Daily Mail notes that the new gig affords him “virtually unlimited access to newspapers”… a perk welcomed by procrastinating library types the world over. 

Library behind bars gets forced into closet [Toronto Star] : “[A volunteer who] amassed more than 2,000 volumes, from thrillers to psychology texts [was told to] move the prison library into a glorified broom closet, perhaps 6 metres long and a mere 100 centimetres wide… Officials [say] they wanted to use the library room to store protective vests. Guards tried to intervene; they offered a variety of alternatives, and asked to be present when the issue was discussed in management meetings. They were ignored.”

This is happening in the Toronto neighbourhood where I live, perhaps a 15-minute walk from my apartment.

In fairness, Wikipedia’s entry for the Don Jail notes that, because it was only designed to hold prisoners briefly before and during trial, it lacks all kinds of facilities, including a proper laundry and sufficient telephones, exercise space and visiting rooms.

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Prisons purging books on faith from prison libraries [New York Times] : “[The US Federal] Bureau of Prisons [says it] was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups.”

Not all items about religion are being discarded; instead, administrators claim, the goal is to ensure that only “reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts” remain available to prisoners.

Prison chaplains and academics (who one imagines might consider themselves to be reliable experts on the subject) are reportedly disputing the quality and variety approved materials:

“There are some well-chosen things in here,” Professor Larsen said. “I’m particularly glad that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is there. If I was in prison I would want to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” But he continued, “There’s a lot about it that’s weird.” The lists “show a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism,” he said, and lacked materials from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations.

ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has a solid post following the development of this story. Briefly: the initiative - called the Standardized Chapel Library Project - has since been put on hold and most pulled items will go back to the prisons, with the exception of “material that could be radicalizing or incite violence.”