©2009-2023 by William David Mongelli

At MCI-Norfolk, I managed the population law & lending Libraries, the hospital Libraries, and segregation law Library for 34 years, four months, and 14 days.  Since 2009 I’ve blogged about this stuff on JAILFIRE.  No one reads blogs anymore which means that each month I flush six bucks of server/hosting fees down the shitter. But here’s the thing!  I haven’t added new content since 2015, so it sucks to be them (the hosting service).  I love correctional Librarianship. I say this with a straight face, and my primary care physician claims my frontal lobes are both intact; the psychologist certifies that my IQ teeters between So What and Slightly Above; and my workaday run-ins with sadists and sociopaths proved that I was never a masochist. So I can’t blame it on any of that. I reckon guess and calculate that I truly enjoy what I do, because over three decades later I managed to stumble inside to take Just a Little More.

Hey!  Read about a grant program we did, administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. You can read about the proposal by clicking on LSTA Grant

Regarding jailhouse humor, the proverbial Den of Iniquity is only a foyer into what is known ’round our way as the population Lending Library which, apparently, is short for “We’re going to make fun of & torment you.” Click on Humor to see what I mean. But enter at your own risk. Contents are definitely an ‘R’ rating. At least.

We try our best (actually, not really) to keep up with the shape-shifting world of correctional Library resources under Prison Library Links

The service philosophy of many correctional Librarians weighs heavily on the ‘librarian’ side. Yet, a purely library science perspective does a disservice to the inmates, to the Librarian, to corrections, and to society. I fervently believe that we need to use our librarianship to correct. The service philosophy which informs my Librarianship uses empirical evidence based in library science but tempered with correctional theory. For more on this, please see Service Philosophy

I have taught graduate students about correctional Librarianship. You can find that stuff under Online Courses

All Massachusetts correctional Librarians teach prisoners a cognitive-thinking seminar based on bibliotherapy. You can find out about our classes under ABLE MINDS

Correctional Librarians must understand for whom they’re working, and why security and correctional theory — yes, even in the Library — is paramount. For more on this, please see Security

Apparently, evidently, and obviously, this site is a work-in-progress, where it has stagnated for eight (8) years.  ¡Paciencia, mis amigos! After all, even the Holy Roman Empire–which wasn’t an empire, doubts as to whether it was Roman, and was certainly never holy–wasn’t destroyed in a day. These. Things. Take. Time.