From Publishers Weekly:
With Banned Books Week approaching, the American Library Association has released new preliminary data showing a continuing surge in attempts to censor books and materials in public, school, and academic libraries during the first eight months of 2023.
In a release, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) reported 695 attempts to censor library materials between January 1 and August 31, 2023, up only slightly from the 681 documented attempts at this point last year, but still on a record-setting pace. Those 695 challenges involve a growing number of books, however, with the number of unique titles challenged jumping 20% over last year: 1,915 unique titles have been targeted so far in 2023 compared to 1,651 last year. And once again, ALA data shows that most of the challenges were to books “written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.”
The rise in unique titles challenged is indicative of the rise in organized political groups creating and sharing lists of objectionable books. In past years, most challenges came from individuals seeking to remove or restrict a single title.
“The largest contributor to the rise in both the number of censorship attempts and the increase in titles challenged continues to be a single challenge by a person or group demanding the removal or restriction of multiple titles,” ALA officials explain. “As in 2022, 9 in 10 of the overall number of books challenged were part of an attempt to censor multiple titles.” And challenges that targeted “100 or more books” were reported in 11 states thus far in 2023, compared to six during the same reporting period in 2022—and zero in 2021.
The data also suggests that the surge in book bans is moving from school to public libraries. Challenges to books in public libraries accounted for nearly half of the challenges documented (49%) thus far in 2023, ALA officials report, compared to 16% during the same reporting period in 2022.
“Expanding beyond their well-organized attempts to sanitize school libraries, groups with a political agenda have turned their crusade to public libraries, the very embodiment of the First Amendment in our society,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, in a statement. “These attacks on our freedom to read should trouble every person who values liberty and our constitutional rights. To allow a group of people or any individual, no matter how powerful or loud, to become the decision-maker about what books we can read or whether libraries exist, is to place all of our rights and liberties in jeopardy.”
ALA data on book challenges is compiled from reports filed with its Office for Intellectual Freedom by library professionals in the field, as well as from news stories published throughout the United States. The data presents a snapshot of the censorship climate, officials say, noting that man (likely most) book bans are never reported, and, on challenges may be resolved in favor of keeping challenged books.
Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly
For Darwinian reasons, allelopathic plants such as black walnut trees deploy chemicals toxic to other plants to prevent them from growing. Similarly, these LGBTQIA2S+ controversies boil down to a struggle between normies who hope someday to have grandchildren and those who, for ideological reasons, seek to prevent normies from ever having any grandchildren at all.
In a release, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) reported 695 attempts to censor library materials between January 1 and August 31, 2023, up only slightly from the 681 documented attempts at this point last year, but still on a record-setting pace.
Would this indicate a new variety of material was purchased 695 times? It’s much more fun to just think of these as delayed objections to a specific purchase.
It could be worse.
It could be objections to the continued existence of libraries for failure to remove what an interest group believes is “inappropriate material.” Like was attempted not so far from "ultraliberal" here (and fortunately appears to have failed… but an appeal remains possible…).
In the UK an MP seriously suggested that between the internet and Kindle Unlimited there was no need for libraries. He was shouted down by the book lobby but several EU countries have toyed with culture-supporting national ebook libraries, ala Gutenberg.
In time…
If a library in Scarsdale insisted on carrying children’s books claiming the Holocaust never happened, people there would go totally nuts. Maybe to the point of wanting to shut the place down and consequences be damned.
If a library in Dearborn insisted on carrying children’s books that had illustrations of the Prophet Mohammed, people there would go totally nuts. Maybe to the point of wanting to shut the place down and consequences be damned.
In both cases, a reasonable man might conclude the problem is mostly with the librarians themselves, who acted in a way seemingly calculated to drive people totally nuts, much as the FBI’s COINTELPRO incited student radicals in the Sixties to do things that discredited the antiwar movement in the eyes of the public
Along the same lines, if a library in Seattle insists on carrying children’s books that promote
the sexual mutilation of prepubescentstransgenderism and people there (even in that ultraliberal area, as you point out) go totally nuts, maybe to the point of wanting to shut the place down and consequences be damned, then a reasonable man might conclude something similar is going on in this instance as well.