In a recent webinar on the collection, James McGrath Morris, author of the book Jailhouse Journalism noted:
“Inmates hoped that as a voiceless group of people their complaints, their humanity, their dreams could reach the outside world. Prison newspapers did that. The great value of digitizing these newspapers and making its history open is there are endless areas of research that can be done using these materials, both from things like art and typography to the views of voiceless people in the 19th and 20th century; how they chose to express themselves is all contained in the prison press. Such a collection will be immensely valuable.”
Under a library-funded open access model, Reveal Digital aims to publish curated primary source collections from a wide array of libraries, museums, historical societies and individual collectors. This collection will be made Open Access when the cost-recovery threshold is reached. Until then, funding libraries have exclusive access to the content. As a funding library, UK will gain access to materials as they become available.
The Libraries also have access to the Understanding Hate in America collection, which was published earlier this year.