University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Long Development of Prison Libraries in France

Cramard, Odile

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/18750

Description

Title
The Long Development of Prison Libraries in France
Author(s)
Cramard, Odile
Contributor(s)
McLoughlin, Kevin
Issue Date
2011
Keyword(s)
  • Library and Information Services to Incarcerated Persons: Global Perspectives
  • Prison libraries -- France.
Abstract
Libraries have existed in French prisons since the mid-nineteenth century, and for more than a century the French Penitentiary Administration has made an effort to structure and organize them as well as to monitor what books are made available to inmates. The role and impact of these libraries has evolved slowly over time, and over the years central control was gradually relaxed. In the early 1980s, cooperative efforts between the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Justice opened the door for new political direction that facilitated the opening of correctional facilities to the eyes of the outside world and encouraged representatives of cultural organizations to become involved with the prison population behind the wall. Prison libraries subsequently underwent a profound transformation when public library professionals began to venture inside the prisons in order to reorganize the existing book storage areas (which had been inaccessible to inmates) into proper libraries, like those they managed in the outside world. An examination of the situation in the Rhone-Alps region of France serves as a useful starting point for an examination of the development of prison libraries over the past twenty years, as well as a discussion of the difficulties encountered and the prospects for the future.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18750
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2011 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 59 (3) Winter 2011: Library and Information Services to Incarcerated Persons: Global Perspectives PRIMARY
Library Trends 59 (3) Winter 2011: Library and Information Services to Incarcerated Persons: Global Perspectives. Edited by Vibeke Lehmann