''Guidelines for Library Service to Prisoners'' was created in reaction to the changing trends in prison libraries. From the 1820s on, most prisons in the U.S. had some collections of books, usually reformatory and religious materials. Over the years, prison collections kept growing, one collection in Illinois boasting 4000 volumes in 1877. As attitudes towards prisons and the criminal system changed, so did the libraries as penologists saw libraries and reading as avenues of reform and rehabilitation. In the 1960s and 1970s, prison libraries saw some the best times: many prisons gained librarians, Title IV in 1966 of the Library Services and Construction Act allowed for federal funding of prison libraries and thus budgets for collection development. Prisoners had access to information, both leisure/entertainment and educational.

But by the 1980s and 1990s, attitudes towards prisons changed and with them, attitudes towards libraries. Politicians saw no need for funding prisoners' reading needs, penologists turned away from rehabilitation methods (under which prison libraries, reading, and access to information for prisoners fell under), and federal funding took a nosedive. IFLA revised its ''Guidelines for Library Service to Prisoners'' in 1995 calling for better collections and for prisoners' access to reading materials of all kinds, and standards similar to public libraries. But in 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court with ''Lewis v. Casey'' ruled that prisoners did not necessarily have a right to a prison library and the LSCA was changed in 1997 to the Library Service and Technology Act, which cut funding to libraries such as prison libraries. Prison libraries across the country shut down.

IFLA revised its ''Guidelines'' for a third time in 2005.

Sources:

Sullivan, Larry E. "Prison Libraries." ''International Dictionary of Library Histories: Volume 1''. David H Stam., ed. Chicago. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001: 137-140.

Lehmann, Vibeke and Joanne Locke. "Guidelines to Library Services to Prisoners, 3rd Edition." ''IFLA Professional Reports''. Vol. 92, 2005.

http://www.ifla.org/VII/s9/nd1/iflapr-92.pdf

Compiled by Lia V.