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.
Volume 27, Number 1, Spring 2005
Recruiting for Prison Libraries
Recent literature on library recruitment places great emphasis on the fact that within six to ten years over 60 percent of
librarians will retire from the profession and that there will not be sufficient qualified librarians to fill the vacant
positions.
This portends even greater problems for recruiting to prison librarianship where historically we have experienced
difficulty in attracting qualified candidates to work in our institutions. While to my knowledge no survey exists that
indicates the reason there is difficulty in recruiting for prison librarianship, the questions I am often asked is indicative
of some of the issues.
The questions center on workplace danger. My responses have been:
- Prisons have security personnel who are employed not only to keep the inmates in check, but to ensure the safety of
staff and prisoners.
- More crimes occur in communities, in parking lots, in people’s homes, and on the street than in prisons. Most incidents
in prisons are inmate to inmate. The media highlight the slightest prison incident, in order to sensationalize the news.
- Inmates respect the prison library because it is the one place that they can go for unbiased and current information.
- Because inmates do not want to lose library privileges, their behaviors are often better than behaviors in the community
libraries.
- The librarian has the authority, with the support of the security personnel, to remove and ban anyone who displays
inappropriate behaviors.
- Prison libraries are used by people who want to be in the library, who recognize it is a privilege, and there are no
after-school-kids encounters.
Strategies I have employed to encourage librarians to apply for vacant positions include:
participating in local state library association to create awareness, giving talks to library school groups, inviting
visits to the libraries, having librarians participate in workshops, and inviting public librarians to do programs in the
prisons.
While visiting librarians are impressed with the positive atmosphere where inmates quietly use databases, research
reference items, check out books, or just browse magazines, they often comment, “How good you are to be working here.”
This gives the impression that the correctional librarians are regarded as missionaries rather than as professionals.
To this comment, I normally respond cheerfully, “We regard ourselves as professionals providing services to special
populations.”
In Maryland, salaries for prison librarians are competitive. Yet we still have difficulty getting candidates even
after advertising in the local newspapers, on the professional job line, on the State Library listserv, on national
electronic discussion lists, and on the prison library discussion list. We have had positions vacant for up to a year,
then have lost those positions because they have been vacant for too long. While we require librarians with an MLS, in a
few cases, we have had to modify the requirements in order to staff the libraries.
My hope is that the IMLS funding to recruit and train librarians will result in a flurry of recruits, some of whom will
be committed to providing library services to the traditionally underserved.
For more information, contact Shirley by phone at (410) 767-0493.
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Recruiting for Prison Libraries