It takes you to the Antarctica of our society, to the lost in the library science continent of prison libraries. The book is one of the station where explores and practitioners like myself are dwelling for a short time and then taking their journey into the unbelievably blind and deaf to reading and literacy needs environment, it is environment of punishment and wrongdoers.
The only existence of the book about such subject alone contributes to its high value.
I keep its book as a rarity on my bookshelf plus it gives me a sense of participation in special community of prison librarians.
Bonus of the book is Information Skill Training Curriculum in its appendix. The minus is a weak advocacy of prison libraries without any cognitive research cited. It does not mention statistics on usage of prison libraries though all prison librarians are gathering statistics daily. The obvious fact is that there is no strong foundation for existence of prison libraries in our society.
Сhapter 6 covers jailhouse lawyers activities and Law libraries. Ms. Vogel, using extensive recourses, does not mention the cost of prison Law libraries to taxpayers that is very important to know.
The last four lines of the book resumes: “If as Dostoevsky observed, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”. One can observe the state of prison libraries and wonder whether they are a bellwether for all libraries in twenty-first century American society.”