Start a Prison Library Project or be a Branch in Your Own State

For starters you need:

• A prison system willing to receive the books. This may be more difficult than you think. Always start with the Superintendent of Education for the entire state. Their names are on the internet under the Department of Corrections for that state.
  
  Not all states are organized that well, your task will be to find ONE prison authority, as high as you can go, who will agree to receive books. If you're lucky, you can donate books to the entire system through the state administrative offices.
  
  
• Books of good quality which they would like. The source of these books can be anything: local churches, local civic groups, or people responding to your address from several sites. We can list you on our web site as part of this project so people who are donating don't have to send so far out of state. You may have to reimburse individuals the postage if you get into mailed books and we can talk about that also, but if you can work locally the only cost will be your own labor.
  
  We have the opportunity for national representation at the Library of Congress where we can promote this project and our "satellite" prison systems. Also other groups have approached our representative about donating. We are a national project and do receive national offers: that's a possibility.

It's a toss up which comes first. The prison authorities are going to be shy, naturally, because they regularly have dumped on them all manner of trash that they have to sort thru, so IF you have fine books when you come calling then you would make more of an impression.

If you don't have the books first, then you may have a more difficult time.

Let's discuss which comes first and see how many states we can get rolling!