Public Safety Building

The Public Safety Building (PSB) is located at 115 W. Doty St. The jail facilities are on the third and fourth floors.

Jail Library Group volunteers take book carts to inmates in the jail housing units or "pods" and find books to match their requests. Experienced volunteers are available to train new volunteers and accompany them on their first trips to the facility.

Getting there

After passing through the first floor lobby from the Doty St. entrance, volunteers check in with the visitation window with a photo ID and explain that they will work in the Jail Library. Small token-operated storage lockers are available for volunteers’ personal belongings while they work. If volunteers bring materials (e.g., local newspapers) into the jail, a deputy will need to inspect them.

The visitation window attendant buzzes volunteers through the main door and notifies Central Control, which opens doors and operates the elevator for the volunteers. Volunteers must first go to the basement to pick up the library key from Central Control, then proceed to the library on the fourth floor. The library is next to pod 4C/E on the left after exiting the elevator.

Making up Carts

The inmates will have a wide variety of reading levels and interests. The following set-up and suggestions should be taken into account whenever making up a cart.

Set-up

Carts have three shelves:

• The top shelf should have two rows of paperbacks, one with spines facing out and one with spines up.
• One side of the bottom shelf should have a stack of magazines and newspapers.
• The rest of the bottom shelf and the entire middle shelf should have hardcover or larger softcover books selected from the library shelves.

Contents

• All carts should contain material representing a wide variety of subjects, genres, and reading levels.
• Books should be taken from the shelves rather than from old carts in order to provide inmates with new reading material as often as possible.
• Items for which there are waiting lists, e.g., Donald Goines or romantic poetry, are not placed on carts. Instead, they are delivered directly to those who have requested them. Experienced volunteers handle these requests and are willing to train new volunteers.

Rotating carts

Each housing unit or pod has its own book cart, and it is the group’s goal to rotate a new cart to each pod every week. In the library there is a volunteer log and a floor plan indicating the order of rotation among the twelve pods.

Volunteers rotate carts alone or in pairs. They bring both a full cart of new books and a spare cart for extra magazines and outgoing requests. It is helpful to take the floor plan, a pen, and notepaper along on rotations.

Volunteers leave the library, taking the key and both carts with them, and proceed clockwise around each floor starting with the fourth. They stop at each pod and tug the door handle so the deputy can let them in. Then they replace the old book cart with the new and give outgoing requests either to the deputy or directly to the inmates. They continue until all twelve pods have a new cart.

When volunteers return to the library, they file the request slips, shelve returned books, repair or discard damaged materials, or other tasks.