Apprendere la biblioteca in carcere

Abstract

Books, reading, libraries transform a person. Their function, beyond being informative, recreational and educational, acquires a rehab value in the prison context. Good quality library services contribute the implementation of an effective rehab path, whereas the prison library is conceived as an expression of overcoming the concept of conviction just as a punishment, in favour of, instead, the rehabilitation. Signs of such a change emerged, between some lights and many shades, from a survey, carried out in 2015 by CESP and Roma Tre University, that aimed at investigating educational and cultural projects implemented by the prison schools in order to proceed to their modelling. The contribution reflects on some of them, where reading and library are central keywords. Furthermore, concerning the prison library as a learning lab-environment, it makes an assessment of the biennial experience (2016-17 and 2017-18) of the basic course of librarianship to train library helpers, implemented at Rebibbia Prison in Rome, as a natural development of the “Referencing Story”, a pilot-workshop run by the author in the same setting in Winter 2015.