From chillers to thrillers, mysteries to westerns and fantasy novels to reference books, good reading material recently got a good bit more plentiful at the San Quentin mainline library according to senior librarian Tom Brobst. Both serious and recreational readers will soon be able to enjoy the fruits of the librarian’s recent $11,000 shopping spree at popular bookseller Barnes and Noble. That translates into approximately 1,000 new titles to add to the almost 33,000 volumes that already stock the library’s heavily laden shelves.
Brobst, a library veteran with over eight years spent working in the SQ library, estimates that approximately 70 percent of the recent purchases are paperbacks, with the rest being hard-bound. Brobst and librarian John Cornell were accompanied by education Vice-Principal Frank Kellum, who supervises the library, on the trip to Barnes and Noble. The trio used a request list compiled by the library’s patrons, as well as suggestions from the various programs run through the education department and just good old fashioned common sense in making their selections.
Library users will see for the first time a relatively new genre of paperbacks, the “Urban Novels,” which are written in contemporary street language. In addition, they have added nonfiction books on Black history, a variety of texts intended to bolster course work of the classes taught through the education department, and a selection of other nonfiction works to cater to the more serious readers who frequent the library.
The library, located for the past year in the south end of the old laundry building, also features four daily newspapers and 44 monthly and weekly publications on topics as diverse as trucks to tennis and boating to parenting. The library caters to almost all mainline inmates, including Condemned Row and the Security Housing Unit program, and is open Monday thru Friday from 12:30 – 3 P.M., and evenings from 6-9 P.M. It’s also open on Saturday from 7 AM ‘til 3 PM.
Fantasy and Sci Fi are most popular among the library’s users, according to Brobst who guesses that the shelf life for a popular paperback is about one year. In the library’s future is a planned move to the new hospital building currently under construction and scheduled for completion in about two years. The move will almost double the library space.
The library’s patrons had to wait to get their hands on the recently purchased books until passage of the state’s budget. Now, the books are being marked, cataloged and placed on the shelves.
A good deal of the library’s purchases are made through Barnes and Noble, which offers the prison library a 25 percent discount. But the library will be struggling to replace its most prominent book supplier, Ingram Books. As a result of the state’s chronically delayed state budget approval process and subsequent late payments, Ingram, which offered the library a 40 percent discount, has decided that it will no longer do business with California’s prison libraries. Ingram which a valuable resource for the library, says Brobst, and will be hard to replace.
