Authored by Kirsten Wurmann, Librarian, Legal Information for Incarcerated Manitobans, Manitoba Law Library
The Legal Information for Incarcerated Manitobans (LIIM) Initiative was officially launched as a project of the Manitoba Law Library and the Manitoba Library Association-Prison Libraries Committee in January 2024 with funding from the Manitoba Law Foundation.
We are inspired in part by the following International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) guideline for library services to prisoners:
15.2 Legal information resources must be provided to prisoners. The selection of materials
for this section of the library should be guided by a legal practitioner experienced in the legal
environment of the country. A legal practitioner should review the currency and completeness of
the legal resources available through the prison library on an annual basis.1
The Initiative therefore looks at the unmet legal information needs of incarcerated Manitobans and at ways to better serve and meet those needs. One way to better serve incarcerated Manitobans is by creating a legal information collection for each provincial prison in Manitoba. Currently, collections for Milner Ridge and Brandon Correctional Centres have been created and delivered. The collections can be viewed via the LIIM Catalogue.
What else is new?
LIIM has a new website at https://lawlibrary.ca/liim/ – here you can find links to the catalogue as well as to resources of particular interest to incarcerated family members and loved ones, and for library workers and community organisations.
Another new resource is our Legal Information and Library Access for Incarcerated Persons Toolkit:
“The purpose of this toolkit is to encourage connections and collaboration
between correctional centres and public or law libraries, law firms, law students
and/or community organisations. Many provincial prisons do not have libraries
and are struggling to provide books and basic library services to incarcerated
people, much less meet their legal information and research needs.
At the end of June, LIMM along with fellow collaborators presented at the Canadian
Association of Law Libraries in Montreal. The panel consisted of:
Helen Anderson, Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO) Connect
Alan Kilpatrick, Law Society of Saskatchewan
Romy Otayek, Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal
The Honourable Kim Pate, Senate of Canada
Karen Sawatzky, Manitoba Law Library
Ava Sinclair, Buffalo Sage Wellness House, Edmonton
Kirsten Wurmann, Manitoba Library Association
You can watch the entire recording here: Within Bars But Not Without Rights Panel Presentation Recording (90 minutes)
In our work, we have found that the act of choosing a book can be a powerful act of personal autonomy, and that the library experience itself can be humanising for our incarcerated community members; concepts not readily found within a carceral environment.
Questions? Please reach out to us at liim@lawsociety.mb.ca
- IFLA Guidelines for Library Services to Prisoners (4th Edition- 2023) p.24
https://repository.ifla.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/683cb004-4748-4899-83a4-ab73acbce9ff/content ↩︎
The views expressed in these blogs do not necessarily reflect the views of the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba and should not be construed as legal advice or endorsement.