“A Collection of Obstacles”: Qualitative Findings from the 2020 Library Services and Incarceration Survey

In 2020–2021, the Library Services and Incarceration Survey (LSIS) collected information from library and information professionals who provide services for people who are incarcerated or otherwise negatively impacted by the prison industrial complex (PIC). Given the breadth of the PIC, the researchers wanted to understand how librarians and information professionals respond to incarceration’s impact on the communities they serve. This survey confirmed that there is a relatively small but growing number of public, academic, and special libraries actively providing services for people impacted by incarceration. We collected information about the services that are being offered, the ways that respondents promote and evaluate these services, and the barriers they encounter. This research reveals the importance of information access inside carceral facilities and the difficulty of providing that access, with implications for library and information workers, libraries as institutions, other programming in carceral facilities, and public policy.