County Prison Library Goes Digital

In what seems to be a continuing trend the Blair County (PA) prison library is going to an all digital format according to this report from WJACtv.com. This is not surprising  but a couple of things the article and accompanying video intrigued me. First, this is a prison library that apparently spent $45,000 to update its collection just last year. This number seems inflated to me but perhaps they have the finest county prison library in the country. Additionally, the report discussed how prisoners were using books to hide contraband as evidenced by the cutting out hiding holes in certain volumes. This was an interesting tidbit that I had not really considered before this story. Finally I was intrigued by the warden's statement that going to a computer based system was some how going to fix vandalism that had been seen with the books. Perhaps contraband may be less of an issue but who wants to take bets on how long the computer will last with all of its keys or even before it is broken. Apparently the public library was not consulted with regards to what patrons can mysteriously do to computers. {bb}