Grant Allows Ohio Jail Library
to Buy More Poetry
The Corrections Center of Northwest Ohio has received a $13,154 grant from the State Library of Ohio that will enable it to install an automated catalog and circulation system.
It also means more books of poetry and copies of the classics for the 7,300-volume library, where such works are the most popular part of the collection. “Believe it or not,” librarian Steve Santo said in the May 5 Toledo Blade, “inmates like Dante’s Inferno and Pilgrim’s Progress. They read Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
Linda Shambarger, manager of inmate programs, told the Toledo Blade that prisoners “like to borrow words and thoughts to write to loved ones, and we have several inmates who enjoy writing poetry.”
The library is supported by funds from sales in the jail’s commissary and currently has no catalog system, said Shambarger. “Books are signed out by hand, and there is no way to find books on the shelves. We rely on the memories of library staff,” she said.
Posted May 15, 2000.
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