Search results

The purposes of this paper were to find out the problematic factors in providing library and information services to Nigeria prisoners and the strategies for solving them, thereby enhancing adequate provision of the required services to these prisoners.

Seven main prisons were used for the study with a population of about 6,430 prisoners and 21 prison library/welfare workers. The sample size was 1,322 prisoners and the whole 21 workers. Questionnaires and focus group discussion (FGD) were the main instruments used for data collection. Data from the questionnaire were analyzed using frequencies and mean scores while data from FGD were analyzed descriptively.

Major findings showed that problems like funding, censorship of reading materials, restrictions due to prison policy and staffing hinder to a high extent the provision of library and information services for these prisoners. Also, improved funding of the prisons and prison libraries, services and resource sharing with other libraries, NGOs and other information providers were all seen as strategies to enhance adequate library and information services provision to the prisoners.

Library and information services are needed by everybody in today’s society. Prisoners, although incarcerated, will find useful a variety of library and information services provided to them. This paper delved into the problems of providing library and information services to Nigeria prisoners. The results of the study, if adhered to by the Nigerian prison authorities, will help a great deal in making the prisoners better citizens after release.

The purpose of this article is to explore the influence of books, libraries and reading on the experience of time within the prison environment.

Using semi-structured interviews with Australian adult prisoners, and a phenomenological data analysis method, the researcher has been able to identify lived experiences that explain how books, libraries and reading influence the experience of time, within a prison environment.

Prisoners' experience of time differs from the experience of time outside prison. Unlike readers and library users outside prison, prisoners are motivated to use books, libraries and reading to pass time. They are using books, libraries and reading to assist in their struggle to manage the negative effects of excessive quantities of unstructured time.

Research regarding the motivation to read and use libraries in the general population does not identify the desire to pass time as a factor. In contrast, the current study identifies readers and library users in prisons are strongly motivated to read and visit libraries as a means of passing time. This study adds a new understanding of the motivation to read and visit libraries within prison environments and provides insight into the beneficial influence of prison libraries on prisoner wellbeing.

This research contributes valuable new knowledge regarding the experience of time in prison, and the influence of books, libraries and reading on this experience.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the current status of prison libraries, their role, services and collection in Pakistani context. It also attempts to highlight the main problems faced by selected libraries.

The qualitative research approach was adopted to achieve the study objectives. Data were collected using face-to-face interviews to find out respondents’ views about libraries in prison.

Findings of the study confirmed that inmates’ library queries are mostly related to the legal matters, and it is quite natural. One of the significant services of the Pakistani prison libraries is to help prisoners in their education. The main role of the library caretaker was to educate and offer rehabilitation programs. Unavailability of library space, lack of professional staff, limited collections, poor budgetary situation and censorship issues are the major challenges that Pakistani prison libraries are facing.

The study findings further implicate that open libraries and access to books would promote positivity within society and reduce criminal and immoral acts.

It is the first of its kind and unique study that presents the current situation of prison libraries in the Pakistani context. The study has practical implications for policymakers to give importance to prison libraries in terms of finance, professional staff and the availability of information sources.

IT is hardly an exaggeration to say that the general public knows nothing about reading in prison—and very little of the conditions of life to‐day in, let us say, Wormwood Scrubs, Nottingham, or Holloway. Nor is it easy to obtain details of the prison libraries which are already in being, for only the Commissioners, the officials (including the educational advisers now attached to most of the large prisons), and those for whom they exist, have much practical knowledge of their present status or future possibilities.

IT has now been definitely arranged that the Conference of the Library Association will take place in the week beginning September 6th. Leeds has an old‐time reputation for hospitality and civic pride, and there is every reason to believe that from the library point of view also the Conference will be one of the most interesting and productive of recent years. It will appeal strongly to the whole of this generation of librarians from the fact that the President‐elect is Dr. Henry Guppy, the veteran Librarian of the John Rylands Library, who in the old days, when he was editor of The Library Association Record, gave perhaps greater stimulus than any man of his day to the young library worker to educate and equip himself for finer library service. It may be that under its present able editor the Library Association Record is approaching the quality which it possessed under Dr. Guppy. We doubt whether it has surpassed or can surpass that quality. It is hoped, we understand, that the main subjects for discussion will be those which arose out of Principal Grant Robertson's Inaugural Address at Birmingham last year. Libraries and citizenship is a subject with many phases and possibilities. We hope that the Council will give us the opportunity to explore many of its avenues.

As a second example of library work with minorities: the work in the prisons in Hamburg. In the FRG in 1983 we had 166 prisons with 55,000 inmates. Most of the prisoners are men, young to middle‐aged. There is little known about their social/economic status. Most of them come from disrupted families, being brought up in educational institutions with continually changing personnel which has influenced the course of life of most prisoners. The majority have no professional training, and many of them have not even completed their school education. Very often the lack of education runs side by side with a verbal disability which reduces the chances of success in life. Problems are often settled with violence instead of being solved by discussion.

A MAIN purpose behind adopting a policy of bookstock categorisation is to reduce the problem of bookstock supply (which equals customer choice), to understandable terms. If it is possible to determine a working ratio of shelf titles per topic/category to a given community of users a number of possibilities become available. A primary advantage is the determination of the minimum number of titles sufficient to meet a community of users' demand in each interest area. Increasing the range of titles can be seen as improving quality. A cost and quantity factor can be determined for an economic provision of bookstock and a cost factor placed on a stepped improvement in quality. By amalgamating these factors for a number of libraries a minimum economic provision can be determined for a county. The process of finding the minimum required bookstock will automatically, since the community of users is identified, identify both the timescale and the chance of finding a title by the user in which s/he is interested, has not already been read and is on the shelves, and will also identify the level of stock input and extraction that is required to maintain the quality of choice in any one library.