Author: Amber Pasiak

NYPL: Constraints Outside Bars by Amber Pasiak

NYPL: Constraints Outside Bars

Nestled in an unassuming building on 39thstreet in Manhattan, lies the backbone to many of the programs offered through New York Public Library. One of these outreach programs is the Correctional Services. This program is a small staffed group of librarians and volunteers who help provide reference information, circulating book service, video visitation and recorded readings for children to people in jail. These are primarily New York state jails; however, the reach and depth of this program is rapidly expanding. It is here that I got a firsthand look at what it entails to run a program of this kind. I had the pleasure of meeting and spending the morning with Emily Jacobson, aCorrectional Services Librarian.

Before I went to do this observation, I read The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions guideline for library services to prisoners which details practices that “reflect an acceptable level of library service, which could be achieved in most countries where national and local government policies support the existence of prison libraries.” This guideline stresses the shift from punishment to education and rehabilitation, wherein the role of the library is paramount. These guidelines offer hopeful, democratic and, which I was soon to discover, slightly unrealistic in practice, suggestions. This is not to say that the staff at NYPL has disregarded the suggestions, quite the opposite actually. I felt that they were doing their best to emulate them with what they were allotted. I also want to stress that I do recognize that a large general guidebook is going to have different uses across different institutions, whether it is a federal vs state jail or prison or a different type of correctional facility.

The Day:

Emily and I started the morning with a general overrun of all the services that are provided and how. The first task of the day was to sort through the many reference letters that have been mailed in. A great many of these letters requested a copy of NYPL’s “Connections” guide. This is a reentry guide that is free to people who are in jail or prison and offers information on housing and finding a job. Most of the other letters addressed issues about self-help resources, general reference questions and legal information.

The second part of the day was the selection and shelving of books that have been donated to the program. The correctional services is a donation based service. This means that a lot of the books that are donated cannot be used for certain reasons. Although there is a very limited “banned” book list, a great many others were in too poor condition, repeats or, to my surprise, very out of date magazines.

I was also surprised to learn that the program is all analog. Emily explained that there were several reasons for this. The first was that many of the jails do not have internet access, hence why this program’s reference letters were so popular, and there are many safety procedures in place that would make carrying out a regular library check out difficult. Another reason is that there are very few library locations inside jails, and thus the library will either be a popup that happens roughly twice a month or a book cart service. Some of the jails do offer some storage space, but when everything is in constant transit it makes hard to keep track of most of the books, as checking out a book is a hand-written paper process, with just a title and a patron name.

Keeping track of the books while working in a jail is the sort of dilemma that a regular library doesn’t normally see. As Emily explained to me, a jail is where someone is either awaiting trial, or has been sentenced for less than a year. This means that the patrons to a library jail are very often in flux and books tend to go missing or get lost, making it nearly impossible to have a traditional check out system.

The Days Reflections:

Although I spent most of the morning doing physical aspects of the job, it wasn’t hard to see how the theoretical frameworks that have been discussed in class were in play. The first that struck out to me was the curating choices of the librarians. As this is donation based, the variety of books coming in was already limited, and then the books about bomb making, etc. (if any) had to be removed, any damaged or watermarked books could not be used, and any hard cover books were deemed physically dangerous. So, what does this leave you with? Well, it looked to me that it was a million copies of the same Jo Nesbo and Nikki Turner books.

How does a librarian deal with trying to offer a balanced selection with limited resources and restrictions? How does a librarian take hold of their accountability, responsibility and recognize their “power” in a much stricter and limiting politized institution? Reference letters and book requests do show how a librarian might try to build a certain collection, however, this is not always possible to do, due to funding, donations and general stigmatization of the rights owed to a person in jail. When do these critical questions about a library space overlap or go against the critical questions about the roles jails and prisons play in society? William Birdsall articulates in his article “A political economy of librarianship” that: “librarians need to devote more effort researching the political and economic dynamics that define the past and current environment of libraries. Libraries are the creation and instrument of public policy derived from political processes.” Could this also not be said about jails and prisons?

In the article, “Information needs in prisons and jails: A discourse analytic approach”, the authors Debbie Rabina, Emily Drabinski and Laurin Paradise state that the information needs of people in prison and jail are actually constructed and created by those institutions. This article was written using data from the actual reference letters that NYPL correctional services have received. The article goes on to talk about the term digital divide. This term, otherwise referred to as information poverty, has been contested due to the binaries that it creates and simplification and stigmatization that it reinforces. They state that creating binaries related to the digital divide can be dangerous by placing librarians in a higher viewed position of power. They argue that the problem of information access is not solely the result of a lack of internet.

I found this point interesting due to the already existing idea that people in jail or prison are coming from a place of poverty and that by placing them in a binary of digital divide, scholars are reinforcing that separation, while also adding another level of authoritative power above them.

Conclusion:

Although I do not have an answer to many of the questions I have raised here, I did find it enlightening to have seen how some of the critical questions and theoretical frameworks we have been introduced to as students fit into real world situations. My day spent at the NYPL correctional services has made me think about these questions in a different manner. There has already been much discussion on how some of these issues of power play out differently between public and academic libraries, however when dealing with a public library situated in a very specific authoritative politized institution they take on another new role.

 

“Future research should address the information that incarcerated users have, not what those of us on the outside imagine they do not.”(Rabina, 2016.)

 

Resources:

American Library Association. (2017) “Prison Libraries”. Retrieved from http://libguides.ala.org/PrisonLibraries/Home

Birdsall, W. (2001) “A political economy of librarianship?” Progressive Librarian, 18, Summer 2001. Retrieved from https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/828932/mod_resource/content/0/02_Birdsall_2001.pdf

Lehmann, V., Locke, J., & International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, T. H. (Netherlands). (2005). Guidelines for Library Services to Prisoners. 3rd Edition. IFLA Professional Reports, No. 92. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Retrieved fromhttps://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED497652.pdf

Rabina, D., Drabinski, E., & Paradise, L. (2016) “Information needs in prisons and jails: A discourse analytic approach.” De Gruyter. Retrieved from https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/829457/mod_resource/content/0/2016_Libri.pdf

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Protecting the Power (Value) of Voices: The New University in Exile Consortium

On September 6th of 2018, I attended The New University in Exile Consortium at The New School, in Manhattan, New York. The New University of Exile website describes the program by stating that: 

“We are an expanding group of universities and colleges publicly committed to the belief that the academic community has both the responsibility and capacity to assist persecuted and endangered scholars everywhere and to protect the intellectual capital that is jeopardized when universities and scholars are under assault.”

The New School has a long history of helping refugee scholars. Starting in 1933, The New School’s first president, Alvin Johnson, created the first University of Exile. During the rise of Nazism and the increasing threat of intellectual prosecution, Johnson hired many European scholars as the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. Johnson firmly believed that universities had to play a pivotal a role in protecting independent thought and research. He believed that it was a unendangered university’s responsibility to assist other universities that are under assault.

The New University in Exile has begun working again internationally with Scholar Rescue Fund, and Scholars at Risk, in the midst of new political and military attacks on scholars. In places like Turkey, Iran, India, Yemen, and Syria, universities are being weakened, shut down, and destroyed, forcing scholars to flee or face being prosecuted and jailed. The New University in Exile seeks to be a safe space for displaced scholars. The aim is to create a collaborative community in which these scholars can continue to do research and produce information. The New University has a growing membership of universities, primarily on the east coast, for now, that are joining in the fight for intellectual capital. 

During the program there was an in-depth conversation between Kati Marton, a Hungarian-American journalist, and David Miliband, the CEO of International Rescue Committee, that was mediated by the Director of The New School, T. Alexander Aleinikoff. Marton and Miliband discussed how they both where from families of refugees and how this movement was very important to them. One of the main topics that was being discussed dealt with the removal of access to information. Both Marton and Miliband feared that history is being lost with people. They described how “fake news” and social media has played a pivotal role in shaping ideas and opinions about topics ranging from refugees, political movements to advertisements. 

Marton discussed her growing fear of the relationship between media outlets and popular vote “demi-gods,” which tied directly into a conversation about the current American political position. Marton’s career as a journalist clearly amplified her worries on this subject, and she gave a clear opinion on America’s lost position as a sanctuary country. While discussing this topic, Miliband argued that we must keep recording all the facts and events to protect all voices.

Although, I agree with, and understand this sentiment, it also made me question the relationship between power, authority and context. Different poisons are going to have a different view of the value that is placed on an item over time. Value, as described by Michelle Caswell in her article, “’The Archive’ is not and an Archive: Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies,” is dependent on the way in which an item can attest to the events in which they emerged. Caswell states that “Like, ‘evidence,’ ‘value’ always exists for someone in a particular place at a particular time.” (Caswell, 2016, <p> 16) Therefore, the facts and events that are recorded today, may have different implications dependent on who saves them, how they are later represented, and who is viewing them in the future. 

I believe that the key point both Marton and Miliband were stressing though, had more to do with censorship and false media today. They were expressing a need for information access and reliability in today’s political environment in order to help save information capital. Information capital ties in very closely with ideas of information literacy. Information capital is the theory that agues that information has value. It alludes that sharing information is a means of sharing power. Although, the word value in this theory holds a similar meaning to the value that archivist Caswell mentions, I think there should be a distinction. Value as placed in the Information Capital theory places the importance on how information forms power, rather than how power is chosen in a material. It is important to note that The New University in Exile is working within the western tradition of knowledge. The power to make a record, to name, preserve, mediate, and access, (Schwartz & Cook, 2002, pp.5) is being placed in the hands of scholars and organizations. This does not however, change the importance stressed by Marton, Milibrand, and The New University in Exile, that the ability to have a chance to create information is powerful in its own right and should be a human right. 

At the end of the program we also heard from two scholars, that are currently working within the New University of Exile, describe their plight. Cem Ozatalay and Mohammat AlAhmad are professors that have fled their home countries and have begun teaching in America with the help of The New University in Exile, Scholar Rescue Fund and Scholars at Risk. Hearing these professors talk about the prosecution they faced and the struggles they endured to come to America was very moving. They talked about facing prison time for their thoughts and ideas and how they had to smuggle their families across borders to escape. Through these programs, these scholars were able to continue researching, learning and teaching. 

The New University in Exile is clearly making a stand that stresses the importance of creation and dissemination of information. The university as a mode of expressing and sharing ideas has been a long standing tradition in the western world. The act of a political power silencing voices, and the need to protect them, overrides my concerns about future value placed on the information produced by the voices, at this time. I, like Marton, and Miliband, believe that the most important thing right now is to create, so at least sometime in the future, there will be a possibility of both sides of history being present. 

Important websites for more information on this topic:

https://newuniversityinexileconsortium.org

http://www.scholarrescuefund.org

https://www.scholarsatrisk.org

References:

AlAhmad, M., Aleinikoff, A., Fanton, J., Mack, A., Marton, K., Miliband, D., Ozatalay, C., Van Zandt, D. (2018, September). The New University in Exile Consortium, The New School, New York. 

Caswell, M. (2016). “‘The Archive’ Is not an archives: On acknowledging the intellectual contributions of archival studies.” Reconstruction: Studies in contemporary culture, 16. Retrieved from https://esscholarship.org/uc/item/7bn4v1fk

Schwartz, J., & Cook, T. (2002). “Archives, records and power: The making of modern memory.” Archival Science, 2, pp. 1-19. 

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