CURRENT POSITION Jail and Reentry Services (JARS) Librarian, San Francisco Public Library DEGREE  PhD, LIS, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, 2017 FAST FACT  Austin was project coordinator for Mix IT Up!, which recruited underrepresented LIS students to work with Black, Indigenous, people of color and LGBTQIA+ youth. FOLLOW  jeanieaustin.com; Facebook jeanie.austin.5268 Photo by Stephen Gosling

Reentry Champion

Jeanie Austin is a champion of information for people experiencing incarceration and returning from it. Previously a juvenile detention center librarian, they not only provide direct service to local facilities, but broadened San Francisco Public Library’s (SFPL) JARS letter-writing reference service program to incarcerated patrons throughout the country. They’ve partnered with LIS programs, so students can answer reference inquiries. They conduct and publish research into the information needs of incarcerated populations and what library services are available to them via jail, public, and academic libraries. As Austin says, “All libraries can, and do, provide service to people negatively impacted by incarceration—whether they know it or not!”

Austin publishes in both academic and trade journals, and most recently published a book, Library Services and Incarceration: Recognizing Barriers, Strengthening Access.

Austin also interrogates the state of mass incarceration and the role of technology, and “reflects deeply on the race, gender, sexuality, and class dynamics that contextualize incarceration,” says nominator Melissa Villa-Nicholas, assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island. “They give context…by teaching LIS students about…the racist policies that lead up to so many people of color and transgender people imprisoned.”

Austin will soon expand their work: they are co–Principal Investigator on a recent $2 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant for a collaboration between SFPL and the American Library Association on information and resources for incarcerated people, including a survey of existing models, standards revision in collaboration with formerly incarcerated people, an interactive map, a yearlong virtual training series, and pilot digital literacy trainings for reentering patrons.