Search

For many years, Georgetown University Law Library in Washington, D.C. has offered a national prison mail program that provides incarcerated people in the United States with copies of legal materials for free. While this prison mail program was initially rooted in reference services, Georgetown Law Library shifted its approach in 2022 to respond to prison mail by leveraging the citation and document processing proficiency found through the Law Library's interlibrary loan (ILL) service. This article proposes an ILL workflow model of processing prison mail that may be adopted by any library type, even when faced with everyday constraints in resources, time, and staffing. For non-law library staff, this is a professional development opportunity to more confidently respond to patrons' requests for legal materials by learning a unique legal citation style format, distinguishing between primary and secondary law materials, and understanding where to locate different law materials from free but authoritative web resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]