Welcome back to Library Land Loves. This week, our host Michelle Arbuckle (Executive Director of the OLA) is speaking with two of the proponents leading the way in the movement to support prison library funding, Keersten Wurmann and Tom Best. Prison libraries play a critical role in promoting rehabilitation, literacy, and mental well-being for incarcerated individuals, and they are in particular jeopardy at the moment. 

You may have seen the news about Canadian prison library funding and the significant cuts proposed, with plans to eliminate librarian positions that will affect library services and threaten inmate rehabilitation and recidivism.  

So what can be done to intercept these measures? How do we advocate for the right to read in prison environments?

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• Open letter started by Book Clubs for Inmates 

• Visit the website for Book Clubs for Inmates 

• GELA Prison Libraries Project  

• Learn more about the Manitoba Library Association Prison Libraries Committee 

• Review the CFLA-FCAB Endorsement of the Prison Libraries Network's Position Statement on The Prisoners’ Right to Read  

• Correctional Service Canada. (2025). Commissioner’s Directive 720.  

• De Agostini, Michelle. (2022). Locked Up Libraries: A Critique of Canadian Prison Library Policy. Journal of Radical Librarianship.  

• IFLA (2023). Guidelines for library services to prisoners. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.  

• Joint Statement Regarding Plan to Phase out CSC Librarians and Library Workers.  

• Saskatchewan Library Association. Prison Library Sub-committee.  

• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2015). The United Nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners (the Nelson Mandela rules). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.  

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This podcast is hosted by Michelle Arbuckle and produced by Gina Freitag.  

Editing and additional production support is completed by Helen Chevreau. 

Promotions and communications for this podcast are executed by Laurel McLeod.

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