So You Want to be a Prison Librarian? : An Interview with a Corrections Librarian | INALJ

So You Want to be a Prison Librarian? : An Interview with a Corrections Librarian

by Josh Rimmer, Senior Editor


* special note the author had permission from the interviewee to publish this as long as she remained anonymous


While
I was writing my last article about librarianship and service, one of
my inspirations came from research I was conducting on prison
librarianship. How many times do you see a posting for a corrections
librarian position on INDEED, or other big job boards? I’ll be honest,
I’ve notice quite a few; however, it seems that discussions about the
line of work and its issues are not given enough of a spotlight.




I was able to locate materials for immediate consumption, e.g., an old ALA column from a prison librarian and a neat NPR piece, but I didn’t feel as if I had an “understanding” of the work. Mintern, a corrections librarian who runs the blog, So You Want to be a Prison Librarian
was kind enough to grant me an interview. We’ll call the interviewee
Mintern, and here she talks about her background, why she chose prison
librarianship and provides INALJ readers insight and perspective on the
profession. Read more...

New York Public Radio and The New York Academy of Medicine Recapture a Piece of American Medical and Broadcast History

Launch Digital Archive of 1950s Radio Broadcasts on Health and Medicine

The New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) and New York Public Radio (NYPR) have digitized and released a treasure trove of 1950s WNYC radio broadcasts that feature significant voices from the past and provide a unique view of the medical and health concerns of American in the 1950s. The broadcasts brought lectures from the groundbreaking NYAM series Lectures to the Laity and For Doctors Only out of the halls of the Academy to a broad public audience, offering a new form of access to timely discussions on medicine, health, and culture.

The 40 digitized lectures and talks are part of a collaboration between NYAM and WNYC, which was then owned and operated by the city. Highlights include talks featuring Leona Baumgartner, New York City’s first woman health commissioner; cancer pioneer Sydney Farber; American microbiologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author René Dubos; acclaimed anthropologist and social critic Margaret Mead; Norbert Wiener, father of cybernetics; and discussion of the Freud Centenary and Lincoln’s doctors.

“NYAM’s innovative partnership with WNYC in the 1950s brought important medical discussions out of the Academy’s rooms and into the public’s living rooms,” said Lisa O’Sullivan, PhD, Director of the NYAM Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health. “Today, NYAM remains committed to making the history of medicine accessible to broad public audiences, and we are extremely pleased to partner with New York Public Radio to release this digital collection.”

“The combination of expertise has made for a project with perfect synergy,” said Andy Lanset, Director of Archives, New York Public Radio. “We’re thrilled to make such important recordings available to both the scientific/medical community, and the public at large.”

These lectures are drawn from the more than 1,500 original lacquer discs transferred from NYAM to the NYPR Archives in 2008. The digitization and cataloging resulted from a joint project between NYAM’s Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health and the NYPR Archives, with a grant from METRO, the New York Metropolitan Library Council. 

NYAM and WNYC began their radio relationship in 1946 with the launch of The Laity Lectures, later to become Lectures to the Laity, a popular series of Academy lectures and talks on culture and medicine that had started in 1935. By mid-1950, this series was joined by For Doctors Only, which aimed to bring “the best of the meetings, conferences, roundtable discussions held at the academy” to the medical profession. On its debut broadcast of July 27, 1950, The New York Times called it “an epochal advance in the educational use of radio.” The New York World-Telegram and Sun referred to it as a “bold venture” and “enterprising” in the interest of good health for millions of people. For Doctors Only also addressed critical analysis of issues of society and medicine, as well as the application of the social sciences to medicine, and provided academic presentations in the history of medicine.

The lectures are available on WNYC’s website. Individual titles are also available through NYAM’s library catalog.

Paul Theerman, PhD

Associate Director

Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health

New York Academy of Medicine

1216 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY, 10029

212.822.7350

http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/

Prison Library Offers A Place To Escape by NPR Staff

May 29, 2011
Some 1,700 residents of the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland make very good use of their library. Most inmates will never win early release, so the library becomes a place to improve reading skills, write a letter home, watch an instructional video on auto mechanics or just escape, mentally. Host Liane Hansen visits the prison to talk with longtime prison librarian Glennor Shirley. Shirley runs the libraries for the entire Maryland prison system.

Related articles

• 'Running The Books' In A Prison Library : NPR (nylibrariansmeetup.blogspot.com)
• Battle over library closures intensifies - Telegraph (nylibrariansmeetup.blogspot.com)
• Recruiting for Prison Libraries (ALA) :
  Recruiting for Prison Libraries Interface Volume 27 Number 1, Spring, 2005. Interface is the quarterly newsletter published by the ASCLA division of the ALA. Glennor Shirley takes a look at the reasons why prison libraries may have problems recruiting information professionals and strategies for overcoming these problems.

'Running The Books' In A Prison Library : NPR

Debbi Cooper

Avi Steinberg wrote obituaries for the Boston Globe before taking a job as a prison librarian.

'Running The Books' In A Prison Library : NPR: Running The Books: The Adventures Of An Accidental Prison Librarian
By Avi Steinberg
Hardcover, 416 pages
Nan A. Talese
List price: $26
Read An Excerpt

October 19, 2010
When Avi Steinberg graduated from Harvard, he didn't know what to do next — so he took a job as a prison librarian.
In Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Librarian, Steinberg shares stories of his time working at the Suffolk County House of Correction — from the prisoner who dreamed of hosting a cooking show, Thug Sizzle, to the fragile prostitute who connected with Sylvia Plath. Read more...

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• What ARE Prison Libraries? - A Review of "Running the Books" by Avi Steinberg (popbooks.wordpress.com)
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Who Left A Tree, Then A Coffin In The Library? : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

Who Left A Tree, Then A Coffin In The Library? : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

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