Service Learning Sustains Hope

The Jail Library Group (JLG) is a service-learning project at the University of Wisconsin in Madison's School of Library and Information Science (SLIS). The project began in 1992 as a practicum project and now provides 1,000 Dane County Jail inmates with reading materials and involves about 20 volunteers and 40 SLIS students. The program has a spin-off Kids' Connection program, which enables prisoners who are parents to record themselves reading a story and then send the tape and its print counterpart to their children.