Academic Libraries for Incarcerated Students (ALIS) | Council of Chief Librarians

Academic Libraries for Incarcerated Students (ALIS) by Cheryl Stewart Coastline College

California has a total of 35 state-run prisons where thousands of students are enrolled in college classes. These California Community College AA degree candidates have neither Internet access nor academic libraryresources. What’s more, California’s incarcerated college degree-seeking students are positioned to graduate without completing a research paper and without information literacy skills.

ALIS is a group of California librarians from colleges that serve incarcerated students. We all share a common challenge in that prisoners do not have access to the Internet. We have all developed strategies to help students with their research projects and homework needs. While these strategies provide some support for students, they do not enable the students to develop important information literacy skills. Schools providing face to face instruction, such as College of the Redwoods, are required by ACCJC standards to provide “comparable” library services to students at all locations, which cannot be provided under the current systems available to us.

Therefore, the mission of ALIS is to improve library support and to provide information literacy instruction to our incarcerated students. To achieve these goals, we share information and strategies and unite to work with vendors to develop delivery solutions. We are currently researching an Internet-in-a-Box product; working with a vendor to deliver some content on a memory stick/flash drive; exploring possible funding sources; and developing a relationship with the CDCR Library Coordinator.

There will be an ALIS meeting at 6:00 pm on March 3 (location to be determined later) during the Annual Deans and Directors Meeting. Anyone may attend this meeting. For information about ALIS, contact Cheryl Stewart (cstewart@coastline.edu) or Lisa Foley (Foley@ltcc.edu).

Librarians interested in ALIS should contact Cheryl Stewart (cstewart@coastline.edu) or Lisa Foley (Foley@ltcc.edu).

With the following information:

Name:_____________________________

Institution: _________________________

Email : ____________________________

Inmate Education Listserv http://listserv.cccnext.net/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=INMATE-ED

There is a new listserv for inmate education from the Chancellor’s office, and having librarians on this listserv would raise awareness among faculty teaching inmates.

CCCCO has a Web page for Inmate and Re-Entry Education at: http://goo.gl/ICGsdb