Books for Prison Libraries - Donations

Books, Maps, Dictionaries of all types (languages, history, art, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, sciences etc., reference books, encyclopaedia) Practical "how-to" with diagrams for building, sewing, craft. All of these are needed.

This is my first blog and my first post to it. I am keen to have this idea pursued by as many as possible as it is something that can be done to help people who are often overlooked except for their crimes. Most prisoners are like the rest of us - people who have made bad decisions, chosen the wrong path and many feel trapped by this and their circumstances. Recidivism is reduced by giving hope.

For the past few years I have been involved with the pre-tertiary education of people who need a start to get into higher education. (Post secondary education.) One group with whom I deal are prisoners. Their access to education gives them hope of evading the return to prison that is the lot of many. It has become a passion with me to try to help these people to learn something positive as it is true that education opens doors and offers hope of change.

As part of this the access to reading materials that are supplementary to the texts is limited by the resources that the prison library hold. If people with professional libraries need to move them or clean out the parts where they have changed direction would put aside these materials and give them to the prison nearest they would be building resouces of background knowledge for students in prison.

Subject areas are as wide as the degree offerings of any well resouced university library. From Anthropology, Archaelogy, Art History ..... to English, Literature, Poetry, Drama, Psychology, Science to Zoology, and all points in between are needed. Also, books that are about crafts and hobbies, leisure activities, sporting heroes, gardening, building techniques for projects in the home and garden are needed.

Education Officers welcome these materials and to donate you need to contact the Senior Education officer to discuss your donation.