About 6300 prison library books (author title, year and prison library in which held, some data on price of books) from fifteen prison library book lists for U.S. prisons, 1809 to 1877, with subject/type classifications.

Title counts and shares and total prices by Dewey book class for American Library Association (ALA) list of books recommended for prison libraries in 1933. Book price data for individual non-fiction volumes by Dewey class. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, U.S. correctional education experts formulated lists of recommended books for prison libraries. […]

Shares of books by contemporary subject/type classifications in public libraries and in authoritative library book recommendations in the U.S. from 1700 to 1940.

Data on inmates, book holdings, book circulation, and share of prison library users for individual U.S. state and federal prison libraries for source-determined years from about 1868 to 1940.

Prison library book holdings and circulation for individual U.S. state and federal prison libraries between 1940 and 1980, including data on prisoners in each reporting prison for calculating book holdings per prisoner and circulation per prisoner.

Book holdings and book circulation for U.S. prison libraries after 1980 from data reported by prison library surveys and individual state prison systems.

Time spent reading and time spent watching television per person, prisoners compared to the general population, U.S. about the year 2003. Media use frequency and types of information sources.