Search results

To identify challenges which prison inmates face in obtaining meaningful access to the courts in the absence of constitutionally mandated access to a prison law library.

Beginning with a historical framework, the research explores a study of three pivotal legal cases, highlighting how the prison law library doctrine has evolved over time. Further secondary source research is conducted to illustrate the importance of the issue to the modern day inmate.

Jurisprudence of the prison law library doctrine never clearly defines what alternative measures to a prisoners right to access a library are or can be. Many decisions simply list suggestions and leave it to the correctional facility to tailor reasonable measures that work with their institution, heavily relying upon a separation of powers justification.

The present research implicates a continuity of a lack of meaningful access to the courts to underserved communities.

The present research provides a necessary starting point for further sociological field research into the area of prison law libraries as a Fourteenth Amendment necessity. This research illustrates a foundational flaw in providing inmates with meaningful access to courts and will educate judges and prison administrators alike about this constitutional violation.

Moreover, the present research provides librarians, attorneys, judges, politicians, community members, prison officials, and prison inmates with the vital information necessary to uphold the prisoners Due Process right to meaningful access to the court.

In a field where external factors can far too easily define who we are as professionals, it is up to us to prove our worth. Even when a position appears to lack opportunity for advancement, we can earn recognition through hard work and initiative. In doing so, we invite other opportunities to come our way. This chapter will demonstrate how the author developed his niche as classified staff in the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library at the James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona. By showing initiative early and often, the author was afforded the opportunity to work on two important digitization projects at the library. The first project involved getting the scholarly work of students in the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program represented in the campus repository. The second project involved supervising a Law Library Fellow’s internship, which included resurrecting in-house digitizing equipment. In detailing these two undertakings, the author will demonstrate why libraries play an important role in digitization. Furthermore, the author will show how up-and-coming library professionals can demonstrate the power of the library, earn recognition, and set the stage for further professional opportunities.

Librarians have been urged to emphasize social justice and human rights issues in their library mission, but they may find themselves challenged to provide additional services, such as access to legal information for those who cannot afford an attorney. Social justice services in libraries are seldom adequately funded and providing services in this area is labor intensive. In addition, there is an emotional intensity in library services for social justice that is often not considered in the initial enthusiasm of providing services in this area. Yet there seems to be no limit to the need. An interesting and useful perspective on how a public agency such as a library responds in circumstances of limited resources and unlimited demand can be found in the book Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service, by Michael Lipsky. In this perspective, lower level civil servants who interact directly with members of the general public exercise a level of discretion in the amount of services provided and how those services are administered. This chapter explores how this can generate tensions between more traditional library bureaucracy and social justice services, such as providing public access to justice resources in law libraries. However, the “street-level” response is evolving into a sustainability perspective as librarians embrace a more social justice–oriented outlook in library service planning.

This chapter compares the status of intellectual freedom in libraries “then” (1970s) and “now” (2005). As starting points for comparisons, it uses two Advances in Librarianship chapters, by Edwin Castagna (Castagna, 1971) and David K. Berninghausen (Berninghausen, 1979), respectively. The US Supreme Court, although somewhat ducking the direct question of library censorship in a school library case in 1982, has consistently upheld intellectual freedom, even in the face of an onslaught of federal laws passed by Congress to restrict speech. The high-water mark came in 1997 when the American Library Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union and others to challenge the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which would have prohibited “indecent” speech on the Internet, an undefined term that could have swept away vast quantities of speech. In 2003, however, the Supreme Court ruled against libraries when it held that a narrower law, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is constitutional. This law requires libraries and schools that receive specified federal funds and discounts to use “technology protection measures” to block obscenity, child pornography, and material “harmful to minors.” This chapter looks at these and related cases, as well as the library profession's evolving ethical and political stance on intellectual freedom issues.

This chapter explores the feasibility of establishing a consortium for the sharing of electronic resources between two libraries: the University of the West Indies at Mona and the University of Technology, Jamaica, both of which are located in Kingston. After a description of the institutional and library contexts, the two libraries are compared in terms of missions, staffing, funding, and collections and other differences and similarities including the e-resources. To analyze the feasibility of establishing a partnership/consortium, the exploration and evaluation of formation of a consortium were done using three kinds of analysis: a literature review, interviews, and a review of existing processes and documentation. The data gathering methods and results are described followed by a potential blueprint for implementation. The researchers did not interview or solicit the views of the university administrators and governing bodies or government officials as to the feasibility of such cooperation in light of the tentative nature of the investigation. The authors however worked with the premise that with the proper infrastructure, a consortium between the two universities would be viable. Other institutions considering development or formation of potential consortia might find the approach and methods in this chapter useful as a possible methodology.

This chapter summarizes the library history of Hungary, with the main focus on the decades preceding the regime change in 1989. The country has been a member of the European Union since 2004. One of the consequences of joining the EU was that Hungary had to implement the three-tier system of higher education defined by the Bologna Declaration. This new system of library and information professional education and training that began in the 2006–2007 academic year is discussed in detail. The first students to begin their studies in the new, two-tier system of higher education will be awarded the BA degree in the first half of 2009. The best of them will be able to continue their studies at the MA level at one of the four universities that were approved for new MA programs in 2008.