What is the experience of using e-books by inmates in a prison context like? Posed with this question, the UOC and Can Brians Prison carried out a pilot study in which female inmates club book users at the prison’s library read a novel using iLiad devices.
6 e-books were lent to Can Brians’ prison library at the women’s unit, and after 3 months of a pilot study, a focus group was carried out in order to gather their thoughts about their experience. We talked about their reading habits, previous experience of using ICT, and general experience of using an e-book (advantages and disadvantages, main difficulties, and so on).
The most relevant conclusions were:
- E-book and content design should be sufficiently appealing in a context where the senses are limited, in order to opt for an e-ink device instead of a paper book.
- Inmates consider that learning content and other didactic content such as Wikipedia, dictionaries and pseudo-scientific journals (History, Quo…) are the most suitable content for e-books.
- Using e-books and other types of ICT devices at a prison can help inmates not to be excluded from the technological world that are prevalent in our society.
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