Maddie Reynolds Ph.D. ’21, outreach and information services librarian for Cornell University Library and the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP), has been named one of Library Journal’s Movers & Shakers in the innovators category for 2025.
As part of the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP), Reynolds is overcoming unique barriers to education by providing incarcerated students with essential academic resources. From arranging offline access to JSTOR and curated print materials to leading creative-writing programs and student debate teams, Reynold’s work is transforming educational opportunities for students at Auburn, Cayuga, and Five Points Correctional Facilities.
Cornell University Library and the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) have a long history of collaboration. Since August of 2022, Reynolds has been serving as the CPEP instructional and outreach librarian, supporting incarcerated students in their research and helping instructors prepare them for productive lives after prison.
“Students who are part of CPEP are Cornell students,” said Elaine L. Westbrooks, the Carl A. Kroch University Librarian at Cornell. “Our longstanding goal is to ensure that we facilitate student learning by helping students find the information that they need and to turn that information into knowledge. Our goal is to help create confident researchers, writers, and to help them follow their intellectual curiosities, so that they can go out and change the world—as Cornell students do.”
Reynolds also serves as a librarian for extracurricular classes at CPEP. There has long been a writing program at Auburn, and with a recent grant from the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement and UCLA’s Radical Librarianship Institute, Reynolds has also been running creative writing workshops in all three facilities. The funds allowed Reynolds to invite authors as guest speakers and buy creative-writing books for the students. Even though Reynolds holds a PhD in English, she took a poetry class to prepare for teaching poetry.
“This is representative of their passion for learning and the care she shows for her students,” said Westbrooks.
In supporting teaching and expanding information access in prison, Reynolds’s work complements ongoing initiatives involving other librarians, such as the Prison Education Practicum taught by law librarian and Cornell University Law School adjunct professor, Julia Mizutani. As Reynolds takes a leading role in supporting CPEP, she leans on the expertise of her library colleagues in different areas.
“When I was collecting for our classroom reference libraries, I had consultations with about ten to fifteen librarians working in Olin, Mann, and the Math Library on which reference texts to include for each discipline we teach,” she said. “I’m also beginning a collaboration with student workers at Olin to print JSTOR articles for CPEP students.”
Read more about Cornell University Library and CPEP’s partnership.
