Five Years...

I’ve never doubted that leaving my job in the prison was the right choice, even though it meant leaving England too.  I had dinner with a friend last night and he asked me what it was about that country I loved so much and as many times as I’ve been asked that question, I’ve never been able to answer.  I have no words for it, but it was there in every breath I took, every rainy day, every blade of grass and overgrown ivy and thatched roof and winding one lane road. It was the only place I never felt like a stranger even when I didn’t know a single person.

Even when I was scared and so darkly, deeply unhappy, I felt at home there. Even after five years, it still strikes me as incredibly unfair that everything I loved about that place and everything that was wrong were so entwined that I had to give up one in order to escape the other.

                                                            ***

It’s impossible for me to think of the last time I left the prison without remembering the first time I went in.  That first day was in April 2006, and I was there to interview for the position of Library Manager.  I set my bag in a tub on a conveyer belt that fed into an x-ray machine, and I stepped through metal detectors. I stood with my arms out while a woman in a uniform ran her hands down my sides, around my back, across my stomach and down my legs. I stiffened and she told me if I got the job this routine would eventually feel normal. She was right, but getting used something isn’t the same as being comfortable.

After passing through a set of double sliding doors, I was met by an officer who worked in the library. He gave me a tour of the prison, and because it was lunchtime and the inmates were locked up, he took me everywhere --  through the workshops, the healthcare center, onto one of the wings. He even locked me in an empty cell in the segregation unit because I had arrived so early for the interview, he didn’t know what else to do with me. He was patient and answered all my questions, and when I told him I was used to criminals because my dad was a lawyer, he didn’t shake his head or call me naive. After I got the job, he would often do both of those things.

I don’t remember going in the last time, but I remember every step I took on the way out.  I remember looking at the clock. And then Jane, the officer I hired to work in the library after the first one transferred, said “Let’s go let’s go let’s go.” She wanted me out fast --  too fast to think and get emotional and cause a scene because there was no crying in the library. That’s a rule I broke only twice in the four years I was there, both times early on, before I found other unhealthier ways to cope.  

“This is it, then,” I said to Jane. I gathered my stuff and we locked the door to the library. I looked back through the unbreakable wired glass one last time, at the shelves I had picked out from a catalog, and the books and music CDs and DVDs I filled them with, and the light matte blue I’d painted the walls.

When we reached what is known as the sterile area (where the prisoners were not allowed), I paused and said, “Wait. Am I supposed to turn in my ID?” I wish I hadn’t asked that question. I could have taken it with me. What would they have done? I was leaving the country; they wouldn’t have been able to find me. But I said it, so we detoured into the Security Office and I handed in the badge with my picture on it, taken the first week I worked there, when my hair was so short it barely reached my chin.

In the gatehouse, I dropped my keys through a chute, and bent down to speak through the opening. “I’m not coming back,” I said so that the officer on the other side of the thick glass window wouldn’t exchange them for a metal disc imprinted with a corresponding key number, which is what would have happened on any other day.  

                                                            ***

Five years ago today, I walked out of the prison for the last time. I checked my journals from 2010 but I didn’t write that day. The nearest entry is almost a month earlier, after I’d made the decision to leave, but before I understood what I was giving up.  I was unhappy. I’d been unhappy for a long time. My happiness (or lack thereof) is not usually a factor in my writing, but most of my last year there went unrecorded. I’m sorry about that now, but the gaps between entries have as much meaning as the pages I filled before and after. The lost time reminds me that leaving was the right choice.  

But even though I didn’t write about that, I remember.

                                                            ***

The first set of doors slid open and Jane put her hand on my back to push me through. “Let’s go let’s go let’s go” she said again. I walked through the second sliding doors into the lobby, and then finally through the front door. I thought about the first time again.  Looking up, the twenty-foot walls surrounding the prison seemed to extend forever in each direction.

I wanted to take a moment, but I didn’t know what to do with it.

So I just kept going.

The Futility of the Practical

My staff and I did a lot to try to make the library feel un-prison-like (and in some ways, un-library-like). We painted the walls a bright blue. We played loud music, we shouted across the room. Once we had a contest with giant rubber bands, trying to knock books off the shelves.  We did this as much for ourselves as for the prisoners, if not more so. When I say the prison could be a depressing place to work, most people nod their heads like they know what I mean. They don’t, but it doesn’t matter. But when I say it was also a lot of fun, they assume there’s something off about me. My anecdotes sometimes come off as unprofessional, but those antics were part of coping with the environment, just like gallows humor, and keeping your back to the wall.

A lot of my responsibilities took me outside the library and around the rest of the jail. I enjoyed this because it gave me a chance to remind the rest of the prison that there was a library, and me a chance to find out what was happening in other areas. I sat on several committees with members of the senior management team. The management structure of a prison is complicated, and I’m not going to waste words here with a detailed explanation. Simply put, the head of the prison is the Number One Governor. He (or she) is responsible for everything, if there was an escape, or a murder he would lose his job. Under the Number One is the Dep(uty), and then there are governors (managers) of each area – Security, Operations, Health & Safety, Diversity, Learning & Skills etc. All rules and policies put in place by the senior management team are implemented by the uniformed staff – the Officers and Senior Officers, and the civilians contracted in like me, the education staff and the nurses in the healthcare department. That’s as brief as I can describe it.

In a prison, the biggest gap in communication is between the SMT and the officers. The officers and the prisoners are closer. Some of the prisoners and staff had been living and working together since the jail opened in 1992. For the most part, they had good relationships. You’ll find the odd prison officer who hates the prisoners and treats them that way, and vice versa – there are prisoners who do not communicate with staff. That relationship, between prisoners and staff, is complicated and dangerous. Prisoners, understand why they are there and why the staff are there. Most of the inmates are murderers, arsonists, gang members, drug addicts and mentally ill. Keeping that environment calm and safe for everyone involved is the biggest part of everyone’s job. Over time, years I mean, one develops what is known as jail craft, the ability to assess a person or a situation, evaluate risk, negotiate and if necessary, use force. My four years was nothing – especially for a civilian; a well-run prison trusts the experience of staff to uphold its primary duty which is to protect the public.
 

In the time I was there, we had three Number One Governors, and four Deps. The rest of the SMT shuffled responsibilities every few months at the whim of the Number One in an effort to meet whatever performance targets or audit requirements had been set by the Ministry of Justice. Shortly after I left, the third Number One resigned under allegations of serious professional misconduct involving swapping difficult prisoners with other jails during inspections to improve  scores. One of those difficult prisoners committed suicide.

Prisons are an unfortunate, but practical neccessity of civilization. But the idea that anyone is really protected or helped in a prison is an illusion, an exercise in futility. 

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on January 21, 2011

Repenting at Leisure (in Prison)

Most of the guys in my prison, or at least the ones who were in for murder, had committed their crimes on impulse but some were the result of days or weeks of planning. Some killed with their fists or their feet or improvised weapons from materials nearby. I know of at least 3 who each strangled a woman with the scarf she was wearing and that is why the officers wear clip on ties and the use of dental floss is forbidden.  Others used illegally obtained guns. One poured gasoline through the letter box in the front door of his ex-missus and tossed a match in after. Some of the crimes were motivated by hurt and jealousy – crimes of passion; or perverse opportunity, or gangland revenge over perceived disrespect or drug deals gone wrong. Some were motivated by racism and hate.

I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t spend much time exploring their crimes unless they worked for me, or if they’d caught my interest for another reason. But as a member of staff with regular prisoner contact , I was expected to contribute observations about their behavior to their files, and in doing so I learned their crimes.

If a prisoner wants to progress from a high-security prison to a lower one, he must follow a sentence plan which is designed by the Offender Management department, and reviewed on a semi-annual basis. In addition to staying drug-free, out of trouble and employed, the prisoners are set a series of other targets to achieve including taking a series of reducing re-offending classes. These classes are a key part of the “rehabilitation” process and are supposed to promote Enhanced Thinking Skills, anger management and victim empathy.

That latter requires that the prisoners discuss at length the circumstances surrounding their offense, their motivation and their thoughts and feelings about it now. Their interviewers take meticulous notes and the information is accessible to any member of staff who may need to be aware of the contents or contribute to the files.

For prisoners who are appealing against their conviction or their sentence, it is not in their interest to discuss the crime with the staff, even though this perceived lack of cooperation may stall their progression through the system for years.  And unless they took some sort of plea agreement, most of the guys start out on appeal. This is probably why it takes a few years for the new prisoners to settle down into the routine of prison life.

Whatever their circumstances, those guys have plenty of time to think about how they got to prison. During the day, every measure is taken to occupy their time, to educate them or to elicit some kind of productive and purposeful activity, but still they spend at least 14 hours locked alone in a 6X10 concrete and steel box. For first timers, adjusting to this isolation is difficult. And for some, especially the mentally ill, coming to terms with their crimes can have a devastating effect. They lose their hair, double their body weight or halve it. They may harm themselves for attention, stop bathing, refuse medication, or stop communicating all together. 

But others take a more proactive approach. They read, learn a trade, earn some qualifications and mentor other prisoners. Their goal, in the words of one such prisoner, is to “be something other than older, when [they] get out.”

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on March 10, 2011

Mental Shock Absorbers

When I was 16, I crashed my car at an intersection just outside of Prescott Valley. I was going about 45 mph at the time, but the car I rear-ended was stopped at a red light. I remember slamming on the brakes and hearing the sound of the impact, but despite (or maybe because of) the fact that my forehead shattered the windshield, I did not feel anything. I opened my eyes and the entire front end of my car was folded up like an accordion – but the car I’d hit had only the slightest dent in its rear bumper.

My passengers and I walked away with bruises and a bloody nose, while an ambulance took the back-seat passenger of the car I hit. I remember she screamed and screamed while we waited for help and I didn’t understand. My car was totaled, and theirs was fine. Why was she hurt? The answer, according to my friend’s mechanic father, was the difference in our bumpers. Mine was full of Styrofoam, which then spilled all over the road. Their car had a steel bumper, which protected the car but absorbed none of the impact.

In addition to insulating car bumpers, packing electronics, and containing take-out food, Styrofoam is also used in bicycle helmets – another mental shock absorber. I’ve never had a serious cycling accident, probably because I never took to the sport, but almost everyone I know who rides on a regular basis has a story about how a helmet saved their lives. 

But not all shock absorbers are physical. The mind has its own way of protecting itself from a shock. I believe “going into shock” is actually one of them. Sometimes, depending on the trauma, the mind suppresses it. Or the trauma leads to a fractured personality or post-traumatic stress. If a mind is repeatedly subjected to disturbing  or stressful events, then it acclimates. It tries to cope, through meditation, or alcoholism, or exercise, or humor.

In the prison, whenever something bad happened, I always asked if any books had been damaged in the incident. This was not because I cared about the books (although I did), or because I knew that no one else gave a damn about them (which they didn’t), but because I thought it was funny. Someone gets beaten or stabbed in their cell, someone starts a fire or a flood, someone goes on dirty protest – whatever… are the books ok?

Maybe you had to be there.

The first time I asked, I was serious. There had been a flood in a cell in the segregation unit. The prisoner’s property had been bagged up to be disposed of, and I could see one of my books through the plastic. I asked if I could get it because I wanted the barcode to withdraw it from the library catalog. One of the officers handed me a pair of gloves and watched as I dug through the damp clothes and papers to reach the book at the bottom of the bag. “By the way,” he said. “That’s toilet water.”  I swore at him and threw the dripping book in the trash.  But after that came the jokes. 

 

*This post was first published at The Daily Theme on March 17, 2011

Public Speaking

In the prison library, I once got a written request for a "bok that teeches you how too do oritory." For this prisoner, speaking clearly and well was a skill he wanted to develop as he was appealing his conviction and representing himself. I found him a book on making speeches and reminded myself that intelligence is not always dependent on literacy although I did not have high hopes for the success of his case. This same prisoner also asked me for a list of every law book ever published, because he wanted to buy them all.

Anyway, I grew up performing in Christmas pageants and participating in the Liturgy of the Word at church, so public speaking was never really a problem for me.  I did it without thinking. As part of my final thesis requirement in college, I had to read some original writing in front of a large group of my peers and I got nervous for the first time I can remember.  The writing was personal and I thought I might start crying. It always annoyed me when other people got emotional while reading out loud and I was mortified. My voice shook and no one could hear me. 

In library school I had to do several group presentations, and in the Management class I was part of a group that imploded mid-semester due to personal conflicts, bad tempers and mental illness. Standing unprepared in front of the class with no one in the group willing to look at or speak to each other was probably the most awkward and embarrassing moment I’d ever experienced. I’d known it was going to happen though and warned the professor (and also checked that failing the presentation didn’t equal failing the class).

So, I suppose those experiences were in the back of my mind when, after I’d become a professional librarian, I was asked to introduce a speaker at a national conference. I wasn’t the speaker, mind you, I was only supposed to introduce him. I went to the chair of the committee and asked if I could switch tasks with someone else. The Chair interpreted my request as an admission of a full-fledged phobia, and not as the lazy-don’t-really-feel-like-it mumble that it was. His concern was so great that for the rest of the conference he kept passing me information about public-speaking courses and practical exercises in overcoming fears. I couldn’t correct him because I knew how unprofessional it was to back out of an assignment for any reason other than extreme terror.

He left the committee after that conference and by the time the next one rolled around no one remembered my “phobia” of public speaking. By that point I was more confident professionally anyway. I gave a series of lectures around the county on prison librarianship and, as long as the subject is libraries, I’m fine speaking in groups of any size. But put me in a social setting with people I don’t know, and I’m lucky if I can remember my own name.

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on June 4, 2011

A Duty of Care

In the prison, all members of staff have what is called a “duty of care” towards the prisoners. It’s sort of a vague expression, but it basically covered the need to treat them humanely – to provide food and water and an hour’s exercise, access to showers and healthcare and information (via the Education department and Library).  It also extended to breaking up fights, identifying those at risk of self-harm and suicide, and isolating troublemakers and bullies.

My responsibility was to provide a library service comparable to the one used by the public, which included not just reading materials, but audio/visual resources, IT access and information on everything from prison rules to career training. UK prisoners are lucky that the government deemed quality library services managed by actual librarians a legal requirement, especially since there is currently some question about whether they have the same obligation (duty of care) to the public.

One of the first things I did after I started working in the prison was try to identify and eliminate any obstacles prisoners had in gaining access to the library. Some were fairly easy to fix – such as rearranging the schedule to make sure that the library times didn’t clash with the gym or their time on the yard. Occasionally it was pointed out to me that in real life, people have to make choices about how to spend their time, which is certainly true. But in real life, most people have access to a public library more than one hour a week. In prison , when almost every minute of unlocked time is designated for a certain purpose, there is really only ever one choice – to participate in the activity or not.  And that was the only choice I wanted them to have to make about the library.

This proved more difficult for prisoners who were not held on the main wings.  Separate library service was already provided to prisoners in segregation (solitary confinement), but prisoners  who were long term patients in the health care centre did not have the chance to attend the main library. Cambridgeshire Library Services had a system in place for visiting the smaller villages and providing for the housebound and disabled – called the Doorstep service.  When I was first hired, I went with the program facilitator to deliver books to a housebound couple in one of the southern villages. The facilitator had a file on each person, with their likes and interests and selected about 12 (large print) books to deliver personally to their homes. I remember being greeted by a couple in their 90’s, who were so excited to see us. The wife made us tea, while the husband showed me a letter they had received from the queen on their 70th anniversary. They were absolutely delighted with the service, especially because there was no way either of them could get to the public library in the next town.

In the prison, because it was my duty to provide a comparable service, I arranged a small mobile library service for the health care centre, including weekly visits by library staff to take requests and reference inquiries. There were never more than a couple guys in there at a time, but often they were injured or unable to leave their bed and they certainly appreciated the visits.

That’s the part I miss about working -- interacting with people who depend on the service, people who appreciated that public libraries provide more than just books, but also a companionable social element that improves their quality of life. 

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on April 4, 2011

Dream Adventures

In my more dramatic moments, I tell people that the reason I quit the job in the prison was because I felt like the evil was seeping into me.
 

I had that idea – that the “evil was seeping in” -- a few different times while I worked there – and it sort of became an excuse in my mind for some of the ways I found to cope with the stress. Anyone who has worked in that sort of environment – high stress and dangerous – whether it is a prison, or the military, or juvenile detention, or law enforcement – there comes a point where you think the only people who understand are the people you work with. And the only way to cope with too much stress, too much danger, is to act too much in other ways – too much drinking, too much exercise (never my problem) too much anger, too much sleep. 

I mentioned to one of my library officers about my fear, but she was offended by the idea. “If you feel this way after 3 years, what does that mean for me? I’ve been here 10.” And there were others who had been there for 20 or 30 years, had spent the majority of their lives in prison, on purpose, doing a job that no one appreciates and no one understands.

But, unlike me,  they had lives outside of work, spouses and interests unrelated. In social situations, they were used to lying about their jobs  -- claiming to be an electrician, or the accurate but vague “civil servant.”   I could say, “I’m a librarian.” But I had the feeling that there was an unspoken just in there – I’m JUST a librarian. So, I always followed it with the qualifier, “at the prison” because it was novel, because it was interesting, and because I felt like I was owed some sort of recognition for working in such a miserable environment.

But what I didn’t mention was that it was my dream job. That because my supervisors didn’t have the same clearances that I did, they rarely came into the prison. That I was on my own, in charge by myself, isolated yes, but this was MY LIBRARY and to this day, the idea that I have been replaced grates on me. By the end, I was so ready to leave, so exhausted and used up and sick of it all. But even now, nearly 10 months later, I still have dreams about MY LIBRARY --  the way I did when I began working there.

A couple times in the past few weeks I have a thought – it’s the end of the financial year, I hope they remember to…  don’t forget the… what are the stats like? Has attendence increased or decreased? Is it inappropriate to ask that them to send me a copy of the end of year report? I’m unemployed now, but despite the "evil," I did some good there – made quantifiable, justifiable progress. I want to know if it held up. I want to know how it’s going. And sometimes, even though I wake up in Arizona, with Milo curled into my back, I still have a moment while still half asleep and I’m planning the day – planning what needs to be done in MY LIBRARY . 

*This post was originally published at The Daily Them on March 28, 2011

An Apology for Bores

I don’t think I know any boring people. Sometimes I am bored by what interests other people, but that’s not the same thing. I don’t hold it against them. It bothers me when people don’t get to the point fast enough—when they are more concerned with accuracy than telling a good story:

“Six years ago… or was it 5? Bush’s first term it was, so that must make it… Junior was still in college so …” That makes me crazy. I’d rather tell a good story and sacrifice any semblance of accuracy. I believe the technical term for this habit is exaggeration.

Anyway, I had a prisoner who worked for me who told the longest winded stories ever and it was a real chore not to completely zone out. Sometimes he would tell the entire plot of a TV show, and it would take longer to listen to him than to watch it live. I could always tell when he was gearing up for a long one when he would lean against the counter, take off his glasses and run his fingers through his cropped short hair.
    “Well, Megan, did you uh happen to catch last night’s episode of True Blood on BBC One?
    “No Joe. I don’t have a TV.”
    “Oh that’s right you told me that before. Don’t know why I can’t remember. But you are familiar with the show?”
    “Yes.” This is the fatal mistake.

We always let him talk though because he didn’t fit well into the prison. He was older than most of the other inmates, but only recently been convicted. His wife had killed herself and his children did not visit him, and in an alcoholic black-out he beat to death his 87 year old neighbor who had refused to loan him money.

I once overheard him discussing his crime with the other orderlies who worked in the library – the only time he didn’t go into detail. “I can’t remember doing it, but the evidence was there. It must have been me.”

Most of the time people get bored because they do not understand the details, and the topic does not inspire their imagination. Sometimes the language gets in the way; the jargon can be distracting. I don’t understand the language of geneology, which is why its sometimes hard for me to get excited about 9th great-grandfathers. I’m never sure how related we are. In England, I didn’t have a TV so I was never able to participate in the daily recaps of popular shows with my colleagues. Instead, we found other things to talk about, like books and movies, and the prisoners we served.

Sometimes its hard for me to talk about my job, because librarianship does not seem like an interesting occupation. For many incarcerated people, prison is their first experience with libraries. That’s why it was so important to be friendly and welcoming and professional.  Most people’s opinions on librarianship have been shaped by their experience as a patron, and whether or not the staff were helpful. In many libraries, it is often impossible to distinguish the librarians from the assistants,and from the pages and volunteers;  a library is judged by the quality of its customer service as much as its resources. This makes sense, but it limits the general public’s awareness of the variety of duties and the skills required to perform them. Mention a cataloging problem to anyone but a librarian and it’s like hitting a snooze button. I try to get around this problem by reeling my audience in with a prison anecdote and then I hit them with the library.

Sorry. 

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on January 25, 2011

Under-worked and over-paid

When I was first hired to work at the prison, it was a part-time job – 25 hours a week. In the UK, a workweek is 37 hours.  The other 12 hours I was a member of the Adult Stock and Promotion Team, which managed the collections for the entire county – over 35 libraries. My specific responsibilities were to select and order DVD’s for the county and to supervise the collections on 3 mobile libraries.

Shortly after I started, a draft specification on the management of prison libraries was released by the Home Office, which recommended an extension of professional librarians’ duties and an increase in their hours. My ASAP manager felt that 12 hours was the minimum I could work and be useful to the team, so instead of reducing my hours, I worked over-time. I was hired late in the financial year, which meant there was plenty of money in the budget to cover an extra 8 hours a week. The plan was to hire me an assistant the following spring, as my managers did not want me to burn out by working too much.

For reasons I never quite understood, the extra hours put me into a different, enhanced salary bracket and I made more money each month than I could come close to spending even though I was new to the country and constantly buying household items and professional clothes. I managed to save enough to fly myself to New York City for a week – the first time I had ever paid for my own vacation. I was extremely proud of myself, and certain that I was an adult and would never have to borrow money from anyone ever again. So… naive.

Shortly after that vacation to NYC, the end of the financial year came and I had a meeting with my managers within the prison and out about hiring an assistant. I convinced them that the prison would benefit from a continuity of service if I was the only librarian, although that would mean taking me full-time and giving up my place on the ASAP team.

I was full of great ideas for the prison (reading groups, creative writing classes, literary journals) that I planned to implement now that I could devote my full attention. Some of the ideas worked, some didn’t, as is always the case. I did manage to double library attendance and quadruple the reference queries – but I wasn’t prepared for the isolation I felt working away from the team.

I also wasn’t prepared for the decrease in my monthly paycheck. My car ate what little savings I had left after that vacation, when the driver’s side window fell off the tracks and dropped down inside the door. Then the car was sideswiped in a hit and run, the wing mirrors were kicked off and someone stole the radio antennae. That’s what happens when you live next to a pub. Anyway, after constantly having to repair my car, I was back to borrowing money from my parents.    Even after I became a Chartered Librarian and reached the height of the pay scale, I never made as much money as I did in those first 6 months. I never want to work over-time again – it’s just so not worth it when the money runs out.

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on December 2, 2010

The Dilettante Librarian

I was going to be an art major in college, but I couldn’t get into a drawing class my first semester so I took creative writing instead. Those are the only two interests I’ve ever really had – and not so much on the art side. I like painting and drawing, have a modest ability in recreating objects (but not people – except in cartoon form) but any inspiration, any ability to paint with meaning, left me a long time ago.  I’m ok with that.

I wouldn’t have been a successful art major, because it turned out I didn’t like art history. My lowest grade in college was an Asian art history class. I thought we’d be studying sculptures of people "doing it," but it was mostly about how to distinguish different Buddhas depending on his hat style and hand position. The instructor pronounced the Himalayan mountains  “Hee-mall-yawn”. That may be the correct pronunciation, but I found it distracting and that’s all I remember about the class. I also remember crying all through the final because my best friend was having emergency life-saving surgery at that exact moment and I knew I was failing the exam. The painting of a mandala I did for extra credit, which kept me from failing the class completely, now hangs in my mom’s office. Upside down. She’s worse at interpreting Asian art than I am.

Anyway, I took creative writing instead and those were pretty much the only classes I got A’s in, and definitely the only time I felt confident in college. Or ever again.  I had no idea what I was going to do with it, or even if I wanted to pursue an MFA. I used to sit in the Mills College Library, when I worked the 9pm – midnight shift and look up things on the Internet, explore the databases and try to find something that interested me for more than a few minutes.  Or I spent the time I was working writing stories. Occasionally someone would come up to my desk and ask me a question. Annoyed at the interruption, I would smile sweetly and say, “I really have no idea. Why don’t you ask the librarian?” The librarian didn’t work that shift.

I don’t remember the exact moment that I decided to become a librarian. I was still only thinking about it when I realized I could go to Library School in England. But it seemed like it would be a low-stress, quiet job that would give me plenty of time to write. So, of course my very first professional job was the highest-stress, loudest job and required me to sign the Official Secrets Act.

I also got to find out what happens when assistants say, “I don’t know. Ask the librarian.”  In the course of looking up the answers to everyone’s random questions, I’ve learned a little bit about a lot of different things – and I’ve discovered one more thing I like to do: answer questions. Unless I’m writing, in which case I’d rather you didn’t bug me right now.
                      

 
Note to future employers: This, as with most of my essays, is meant to be humorous and should not be taken as a reflection of my work ethic. I was good at my job, and I'll be good at your job. 

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on November 2, 2010

A Mental Lapse

When I first became dissatisfied with my job in the prison, but before I started thinking about quitting, I considered going back to school. The idea came, sort of out of nowhere, while I was weeding books from the shelves. Weeding books is one of those mundane tasks that I actually really enjoyed. You pick up each book, and flip open the cover to see the last time it was checked out. Then you examine its physical condition. Deciding which books to remove is subjective and tricky in a small library. You don’t want to get rid of popular books, but on the other hand, there’s no reason to hold onto a book once everyone has read it. And books that have never gone out … is it because they haven’t been marketed properly, or are they really just not suitable for the population? On top of that, you might be a librarian with very specific ideas about what items a library needs to have in order to be a Library. That is why, in a tiny library, in a maximum-security prison filled mostly with black men in their early 20’s, you will find the complete Jane Austen.

Anyway, that’s what I was doing when I had my brilliant idea. I came across a prison studies book that hadn’t been issued in 2 years… and I thought, maybe I could use this place as a case study. I had a ‘captive’ audience that I could study and do my thesis on the uses of a prison library and finally get my Masters in Library Science. I was standing on a chair, dropping discarded books on the floor. That’s something else you get to do when you’re a librarian – you can ‘mistreat’ books. In the course of your daily duties, but especially during weeding season, you can drop the books on the floor, you can toss them across the room aiming for a box (usually you will miss, but when you make it, you can throw your arms in the air and shout Heeeyyyy!), you can write on the books and you can rip out pages. And you can do those things because you are The Librarian.

                                                                 
 

So I continued for most of the morning, working backwards in my mind from planning my Masters in Library Science thesis, to selecting programs, to wondering if I would have to pay foreign tuition after living in England for so long, to mentally composing my application and updating my resume. I flipped through a book and blew a bunch of dust straight into my eyes. I rubbed at them with the back of my hand and bemoaned the fact that I always seemed to develop conjunctivitis while weeding books and was that a side effect of being a librarian or being a prison librarian?

Which is when I remembered.

I already have a Masters Degree in Library Science.  

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on October 12, 2010

Haunted Libraries

Most people assume that the most popular section in a prison library is True Crime. That’s probably true, but at the prison I worked in, modern True Crime was banned. We had plenty of books about Jack the Ripper, and other famous, long dead killers, but there were no books by or about any currently incarcerated prisoners. I didn’t know that was unusual until I visited another prison library and found book after book about the people I worked with every day.

Prison libraries in the UK are meant to be a mix of public and school libraries, and censorship is unusual except for security reasons. It makes sense not to have books on martial arts or how to build bombs. And, it was explained to me, that books written by inmates were not allowed because they should not be able to profit from their crimes while they are in prison. Also included under this mandate were books about current inmates. After I had been working there for a while, an officer explained to me another, more disturbing, reason.

In 1993, not long after the prison opened, and before the infamous IRA escape, a Whitemoor prisoner was murdered by two other inmates. His name was Leslie “Catweazle” Bailey and he was a convicted pedophile and child killer. According to the officer, the subsequent investigation revealed that the prisoners learned about Bailey’s crimes in a book they had checked out from the prison library. Then, all books that mentioned any prisoners or their crimes were removed from the library.

The Security Department at the prison periodically tried to ban books and I always challenged them to demonstrate an actual risk. Sometimes I got the book re-instated (in the case of a book about military helicopters), and other times I acquiesced (in the case of a book on chemical warfare). While preparing for this essay, I searched online for information about this murder. Although I was able to confirm that a prisoner by that name was murdered in Whitemoor prison, I could find no mention of a library book being to blame. That information may not have been released to the press, or it may not even be true.

Under normal circumstances, I would argue that freedom of information is a human right, no matter what a small minority might choose to do with that information. But a prison library is not a public library, the minority is the majority, and sometimes safety and security, even for murderers and rapists, takes precedence over censorship quarrels and access to information. So, I never challenged this rule, because I didn’t want the library to be haunted by another murder.

*This entry was originally posted at The Daily Theme on September 10, 2010

The Serendipity of Browsing

One night when I was still working, a prisoner shouted to me from across the library,

"Miss! Where you keep the black books?"
"We don't segregate books in this library."
"Seriously Miss, how am I supposed to find other books this guy wrote? You should have a system and put them in some kinda order, like, by genre, you know... law, cooking, fiction..."
"Yeah, we do have a system."
"You gotta fiction section?"
"It's arranged by the author's last name."
"Oh, right. That's a good system."
"I think so too."

Setting aside the fact that I obviously failed that prisoner when I gave him the library induction, the way books are shelved in a library can actually be a complicated notion. The inmates who worked for me in the prison library were tasked with shelving the library materials. It was a continuous struggle to get them to put the books where they belonged instead of in the first space they came across. One time they tried to convince me that all the books should be re-shelved according to size because “it would look so much nicer” and had completed a section before I could stop them.  

Everyone’s heard of the Dewey Decimal Code, but it’s actually a really outdated coding system (i.e. Philosophy & Psychology get the 100’s, Religion gets the entire 200’s section, but computers only get from 004-006). However, with the DDC and other subject based shelving systems, items placed next to each other are usually related. This system lends itself well to browsing, as people are often searching for a specific topic rather than author (except in Fiction). In the library world, there is a notion of the ‘serendipity of browsing,’ the loss of which is often bemoaned when discussing the digitization of information – when card catalogues became online catalogues, and when people started using Google to answer their questions, instead of the Reference section. The serendipity of browsing is the idea that one often finds exactly what they are looking for, seemingly by accident.

But it’s not an accident – not really. You may be randomly browsing the Just Returned shelf, or wandering the stacks with a vague idea of what you’re looking for, and suddenly stumble upon an entire section relevant to your interest. There is a psychology to this – people choose reading material either because it was recommended (in reviews, by a friend, and by virtue of having been recently read) or because they are looking for specific information. Non-fiction books are not shelved alphabetically because people would have to run all over the place to find what they were looking for; it would incapacitate the ‘serendipity of browsing’ and diminish the influence of proximity.

The influence of proximity is really a matter of convenience. People usually shop at the grocery store closest to their home, pick the restaurant closest to the movie theater and fall in love with “the girl next door.” And when browsing, they look for more information on a subject and expect to find it within arm’s reach. Those aren’t the only options and they may not be the cheapest, the best, or even available, but close and convenient often rank high when making decisions (at least, when I make decisions). And it is this somewhat lazy human personality quirk that Mr. Dewey was catering to when he came up with his system.

*This entry was first published at The Daily Theme on September 27,2010