2005 Annual Report

In her essay “Doing it: Migrant Workers’ Library,” part of the original Revolting Librarians compilation, Martha Powers Williams wrote:

We have no earthshaking conclusions, but all those books, magazines, pamphlets, posters, crayons, coloring books, and films were used by people who would not have seen them if we hadn’t been there. And, that’s what libraries are all about, isn’t it?

In 2005, the Jail Library Student Group captured this spirit as we continued to provide recreational, educational, and community resource reading materials to inmates located in the Dane County Jail facilities, and made plans to expand our services.

2005 by the numbers

• 1 conference
• 30 volunteers
• 47 Kids’ Connection participants
• 400 jail visits
• 835 volunteer hours
• 1465 filled requests for materials

Kids’ Connection

This was a great year for Kids’ Connection, which served over 100 children of 47 inmates. The participants were unanimous in their praise and thanks for the program, and were particularly pleased to have this special way to keep in touch with their kids. For many of the inmates, this was a chance to send their child a birthday or Christmas gift that they otherwise couldn’t afford.

Inmates take special care in picking out just the right book for their children, often selecting books that they themselves had enjoyed as a child. Both male and female inmates were well represented in the program. It was clear that many of the inmates were used to reading to their kids, and many were quite eloquent narrators. A few inmates did have some reading problems, and the six dedicated Kids’ Connection volunteers were able to help out with especially hard words. Kids’ Connection volunteers also assisted inmates in choosing books.

Planning efforts began in 2005 to expand Kids’ Connection to the Ferris Center (work release jail) in early 2006. A grant from the Herbert Kohl Foundation has been instrumental in this endeavor.

City-County Building

With eleven different library volunteers, we filled milk crates with books and magazines that were then distributed to the four wings on a rotating basis. We filled 836 requests, down slightly from 2004. We were unable to fill 244 requests. Volunteers worked well over 175 hours.

Public Safety Building

Another nine regular volunteers worked over 238 hours during about 125 separate visits to the Public Safety Building. We rotated book carts between the pods fifty-one times - a new record! We also delivered requests 629 times. In about one hundred additional cases, we attempted to deliver materials but inmates had already left. In about 192 cases, we were unable to find materials to match an inmate’s specific request.

Outside the Jails

Volunteers spent more than 300 hours on various support activities. We gathered donations from local library book sales, used book stores, and collection bins; prepared donations at 11 "processing parties;" and delivered carload upon carload of boxes to the jails, among other activities.

Elsewhere

In October, JLG volunteers were part of a panel on library services to the incarcerated at the Wisconsin Library Association conference in La Crosse. The session was well-attended despite its early time slot. A slideshow including new photos of both jail libraries was adapted from the conference program and posted to the JLG web site.

Supporters

Our supporters this year included:

• CIMC, College Library, and Dane County Legal Resource Center, donation dropoff sites
• Dane County Library Service
• Friends of the Madison and Middleton Public Libraries
• Herbert Kohl Foundation
• Madison Rotary Foundation
• South Central Library System
• UW School of Library and Information Studies, especially SLIS Library staff
• Individual donors

Thank you to everyone who helped Jail Library Student Group reach its goal to provide recreational, educational, and community resource reading materials to inmates at the Dane County Jail facilities. We appreciate your support.