The text of the interpretation is published in the Intellectual Freedom Manual, ninth edition (2015), part II, chapter 1, and on the ALA website.
At the 2009 Annual Conference, the ASCLA’s Library Serving Prisoners Forum (LSPF) brought a draft of the “Prisoners’ Right to Read” statement to the Intellectual Freedom Committee for an initial discussion. The LSPF had started its process at the previous Midwinter Meeting and developed the draft in the hopes of creating a new statement to replace the only extant ALA policy on library services for prisoners, a 1982 resolution that urged states to adopt legislation similar to California’s law on prisoner rights. The drafters felt that only an interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights, as opposed to a resolution, would signify the importance of these issues.
Revised drafts were distributed for comment in the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010. The Intellectual Freedom Committee approved a final draft at its March 2010 meeting. This draft retained a bulleted list of detailed recommendations, as there was consensus that prison administrators would not be likely to read associated documents, such as a question-and-answer document. After incorporating final suggestions, the committee brought the final version to the ALA Council, which approved the interpretation at the 2010 Annual Conference.
During its 2013–14 review of ALA intellectual freedom policy statements, the Intellectual Freedom Committee changed most instances of “materials” to “resources” for uniformity across interpretations and updated references to policies that have new titles. In the list of recommendations, the use of “materials” was retained when discussing nontraditional bindings because in this instance the physical connotation of the term is appropriate. The ALA Council approved these changes on July 1, 2014.