Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And is it Del Neo? Del Neo. Del Neo. Okay, we are still in Senate institutions on Tuesday, February 24 and we have Catherine Del Neo, Commissioner and State Librarian. She's here to answer some questions that came up when we were talking about books in corrections facilities. And so we'll introduce ourselves. I'm Wendy Harrison. I represent the Windham District.

[Joseph "Joe" Major (Member)]: Joe Major representing Windsor. Russ Ingalls, Essex District. And John Benson, Orange District.

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: Great. My name is Catherine Delneau. I'm the State Librarian and the Commissioner of the Department of Libraries.

[Unidentified committee member]: And then the first time, and I went

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: on. That's right. Yeah. I went up there for capital for a day. You were kind enough to be the member of the public who was there with us. Oh, there's many

[Unidentified committee member]: of us, so I was there.

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: It was a great day, and I met John, I think. The

[Unidentified committee member]: Oh, no?

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: No. I think it was well

[Unidentified committee member]: Was he a representative?

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: No. No. No. The librarian.

[Unidentified committee member]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: Yeah. Really

[Unidentified committee member]: Actually, it's funny that you say that because I when we were there, they had shirts, and and I and I have that in my overnight bag. And this week, I don't

[Unidentified committee member]: I don't know why.

[Unidentified committee member]: So, and then here you are.

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: Well, it's fun to go out and visit your libraries and to hear about your libraries. I've got some oldest library facts to check. But I'm here today primarily just to provide you some information about library materials, which the Department of Libraries provides for the state's correctional facilities. And, I understand that you had a colleague of mine from from outside of the department here last week, and that there was some information shared about the department, and I wanted to just make sure you have the correct information as you're thinking about libraries in the correctional facilities. So, a little known fact is that it's actually our statutory obligation of the Department of Libraries to provide materials for the correctional facilities. So, it's in '22 BSA section six zero five, and we have a responsibility to provide, administer, maintain all libraries and state correctional institutions and all state institutions for the treatment of persons with a mental condition or psychiatric disability and persons with an intellectual disability. So, correctional facilities falls within that purview. We do have a modest budget, which we utilize to provide those materials. So, our department has continued ongoing support for the correctional facilities libraries. I'm not sure, I think that you should have received something, if you're looking at me looking at something, you may have a PowerPoint of your own. I should. But, what we got in the PowerPoint is a screen grab from our full budget, which we've also shared with you. So, we find that our budget documents can be a little bit dense for folks and they really wonder, what are you actually spending? I always get questions about when I'm in senate or house appropriations. What's your book budget? How much are you actually spending? So, what we try to do is to explain to folks when they're thinking about the Department of Libraries that we have general funds and we also have federal funds which we administer. We use the general funds to provide these materials for correctional facilities, given that it's a statutory responsibility on the department. That seems like the appropriate way for state funds to be used for those materials. We have been So, I came back to Vermont in 2022, around this time, been here for four years now as a state librarian, and I saw that there was a need to procure materials for the correctional facilities that had lapsed. People had sort of neglected it a bit. We used some funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, some federal funds, which were specific ARPA money for libraries. We used about $42,000 of those funds, and in the PowerPoint you can see someone had corrections receiving a big stack of books with those materials. So, that was back in 2023 that we delivered materials, which we purchased in fiscal twenty two, And then, we continued a robust budget, another $40,000 in 2024. And then, the books were fresh and new, and so we reduced the budget a little bit to do maintenance of the materials. We may be able to supplement the amount that we budgeted for this fiscal year. We're watching where we may have extra capacity to buy additional materials this year. In next year's budget, you can find that we have a $20,000 amount of general funds that we have reserved for those materials. Our programmatic budget is within, it's sort of an extra piece that we delivered along with our budget book, people can sort of look through and see, is this federal money or is this general fund money and what's the total balance of those two things? Because we often are using both of those federal and state dollars together in about a two thirds, one third ratio. Looking through here, we've gotten some questions in the past about how we select materials for the correctional facilities. It's very similar to a selection material process for a public library, with the exception that there are certain books that wouldn't be allowed. An example of that, corrections won't allow us to purchase books with accurate maps depicting the world around us, which is an interesting one. Perhaps for escape reasons, I am not really sure. You have to ask them, but they have a, there is a policy and we follow the policy. And they have some limits on what we can bring in as far as content goes. And then, there are also limits on the format. So, you probably see a lot of paperback books in the world, that's what we purchase for people. But that means that we may not have the newest best sellers, which are coming out typically first in hard covers. So, we don't purchase hard covers for the correctional facilities. And, we have been noticing that folks have been asking for large print materials, and a lot of times it may be hard for people to get the readers that they need when they're incarcerated, and so the large print materials have a bigger font size. A large print book is accessible to those who don't need the readers and those who do need the readers. So, we've usually been opting to buy large print when large print is available. So, large print is preferred, paperback is required, and then we know that some folks who are incarcerated in Vermont have language besides English, which is their primary language, and so we've been trying to provide more materials that are in the languages being spoken that are non English so that people have access to their first language. And that's predominantly Spanish language materials. We've been getting more of those titles as well. That's kind of a newer focus for us as we think about accessibility and the people we're serving and their interests and needs.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yes. So, and I don't know, if this allowed, electronic materials because a lot of people are now switching to audio books and things of that nature. Is that allowed in the correctional facility and if you facilitate that?

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: That is in our kind of list of future plans. And that's actually something on the the final slide that I'll get into. But we are finding that

[Unidentified committee member]: So what you're saying is if I just shut up, you'll cover all this. Great

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: question. That's what you're saying.

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: It's kind of like you're a plant. It's more like you're on a team together. But to jump ahead to that, we are finding that a lot of people are interested in electronic materials, and that could be because of the scalability of the font when you're looking at an e reader, because it's backlit, you don't need the lights on to be able to read your tablet, so that, you know, maybe in the area in which you are casually sitting, if your bunk doesn't have great lighting, the tablet's often backlit and that can help people with accessibility. But then also the e readers and the e audio books. So, that's something that we are aware of and we had met with the prior commissioner of corrections and begun talking about how we might make that happen so that people who are incarcerated can utilize books and e books and e audio books on the tablets. Each person has a tablet, from what I understand. The goal for the department would be to find a way to provide materials that people could read and that it wouldn't be at cost to them. We would want to see free reading material in correctional facilities. That's something that we are working. We have something called the Palace Projects app, which is our Department of Libraries online platform for e books and e audio books, and everyone in the state can access those materials. However, access to them in the correctional facilities is not possible right now, from what I understand, and we're trying to work with the app developers to explain this business need. I was surprised other states haven't explained it to them first, but we explained to them what we would like to do and to have perhaps a subset of our full collection that's available, the titles that meet the parameters of the correctional facilities, then to be available on the tablet. So, that's something we're working toward. Not something we deliver today, unfortunately, but it's something that we have begun trying to figure out how to increase that access. One of the things that the chair had shared with me before you all went live was that people were saying sometimes they don't have as much access to the collections as they would like. I visited the Northeast Correctional Facility a couple of years ago to deliver the books, and Just the logistics of the place, the layout of it, most of the people's housing was in one building, but the Education Building was separate, and the library was in the Education Building. If there were staffing shortages and there weren't enough guards, they couldn't open the yard, so then you couldn't get to the books in the library. So, sometimes, what they'll do locally is to make decisions about bringing books to people. Each facility is really running these libraries in their own manner. Each facility's setup is different, and that's something that corrections could speak to more than There we are state libraries that have librarians and staff embedded in correctional facilities, we do not have that model in our state at this time. So, in the facilities themselves, it's very much an old school system. I did see somebody, a member of the population or one of the folks who was incarcerated, he had a very simple spreadsheet and he was tracking the books and who had which books and who was on hold for which books. But they don't have a computerized system right now. They're likely using kind of a stamp and a select like you might have when you were a kid, like I did in the 80s and the 90s when I was a kid. Some facilities don't really have anybody. It's more of an honor system. They don't have anybody specifically working there, but in some situations it's a job for people who's incarcerated. Each facility is typically, they typically have the library as part of their recreational activities, and it's often connected in some way with the educational program, from what I understand. We have provided on page seven of the PowerPoint I shared some information about the library spaces, and this is from the perspective of the department and at the time that the department gathered information. So, this of course could change, but they all handle their collections and their spaces differently. Some have their own room, it was quite large, and some have other spaces. I think that there was a lot of donation happening at some points, and at this point, the collections of the department are the primary collections in the facilities. But the decision to make it possible for the public to donate or not, that's a correctional facility decision policy, not something that we would prevent.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: So, a couple questions. If someone wanted to donate funding for books and corrections, could they send a donation to the library? I think

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: that we could accept a donation as the depart the department, I believe, can accept a donation and that someone could earmark it or a specific person. Oh, even a specific person? I'm sorry. I meant to say a specific purpose, but I totally misspoke. So, could send it with a specific intention of supporting the collections of the correctional facilities. I believe that that would be possible. We do get occasional checks at the department and we process them with the agency of administration financial services folks. But if somebody had an intention that it'd be put forward back in the school, we could do that. Okay.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Great. And I guess another question, if a correctional facility wanted to start reading groups, both groups, would you be able to help them with that?

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: Yes, I think that we could definitely help them with that. We are in communication with the recreation, super, the recreation director, We have the Able Library, which is the try to explain, the audio and braille and electronic books. It's the name of our library that serves people with print disabilities. The director of our Able Library is also our Access Services Librarian, Karen Gradland, and she has communication with the folks at each of the correctional facilities. And so, if somebody is interested in starting some sort of a book group, if they have specific requests for things like multiple copies of a book, those would be things that we could hold on. Terrific. Then, as far as our future plans, of course, talked about the e books and the e audio books. We're always happy to consult any librarian in the state on planning and spaces, so if there were new facilities that were being created, we have offered to take a look at those and see what we could do to help. If there are service models people would like to explore, we're happy to talk with folks about that. Of course, exploring increased access to books, literacy programs. This is an area where Vermont could do a lot to grow what is happening right now. And one thing we've been talking about internally is the idea of providing some of the books that are more books kids would be reading so that parents could read with their children when they came for visitation, things of that nature. We know that there are programs like that in nearby states. So, this is an area that we would be very open to expanding to the kids of the folks who are incarcerated. That's terrific. Do you need funding for that? We don't have funding for that currently. We haven't put forward any policy proposals around it because this is something we've really been trying to understand the environment first and where the needs are and who the other players might be before we brought forward a policy proposal. Okay. I wouldn't want to see other programs that we run diminished order to expand that. Another thing I should mention too is that the Department of Libraries has grant that it awards annually to the Community Legal Information Center, which is the Vermont Law Graduate School. So, in Vermont has access to legal librarian services, and the law librarian who works with the public through that grant does do a lot of email reference questions for people who are incarcerated. So, she reports on those numbers to us annually about how many legal reference questions she's getting, and we do see that there's a subset of folks who are incarcerated who are using those services.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Well, that's important. And I think Southern had a law library, a small law library a few years ago.

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: Yeah. I think one of the challenges with law libraries is that what I've seen when I visit, I've only been able to visit Northeast so far, but they did have some materials, it was sort of the NOLO press, are you aware of that press? NOLO is kind of a consumer law, legal form type books, and things like that. And a lot of times folks have more specific questions. I do believe that there I have heard that there's a contract that Corrections has for legal services additionally, potentially, so that would be something that they could speak more to than the department. But, if you did want to just call out that as far as that access to a legal librarian and a law library that everybody in Vermont has, that it's the same service we're providing that for folks who are incarcerated too, They would just be using it by email, typically, rather than going in person down to Vermont Law Undergraduate School. Great, thank you. You're welcome. Helpful information.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Do we have anything else? This has been great. I said when we were talking earlier, I just love the book Gather and I want to promote it to folks who are incarcerated because it's a Vermont book and I think it would be interesting.

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: Yeah, I know it is a book that we have included in the collection. So, even have a picture.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah,

[Catherine Delneo (Commissioner and State Librarian)]: it is among the books that we've provided and we do try to always encourage people who are incarcerated to get access to the books that have been selected for the program that Vermont Humanities runs, is a great program, the Vermont Reads program. Right. So, we are certainly hopeful that they will participate and do a book club, and that's something that we can also try to facilitate for them and to assist them with. Terrific. Thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity Thank to talk with you. Okay. So, that is all. Our work is done for today.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And just as a reminder, we will not have the meeting tomorrow unless something changes, but I expect it will. And so we will resume our work on Thursday. Thing And anyone wants to discuss? Any questions?