Murphy Library News

Celebrate Your Freedom to Read!

By Teri Holford

This week, September 22-28, is Banned Books Week. It’s a celebration that’s been recognized by the American Library Association since 1982 in response to a sudden increase in requests for books to be banned. It’s also an awareness campaign to inform people of the harms of censorship.

The freedom to read is one of our most precious rights; it is essential to our democracy and has been continuously under attack by individuals, private groups, and public authorities. Their efforts to remove or limit access includes censorship (banning), labeling items as controversial, and distributing lists of "objectionable" titles or authors.

Challenges are more than an opinion or point of view; rather, they are an attempt to restrict access to material from the curriculum or library. Challenges are often motivated by a desire to protect children from content that is perceived by them to be inappropriate or offensive. The top three reasons for challenges, according to ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom: 

• Material was considered to be "sexually explicit"
• Content contained "offensive language"
• Content was "unsuited to any age group"

There is a difference between challenging and banning a book

CHALLENGE: an attempt to remove or restrict materials

BANNING: the result of a challenge that results in the removal of challenged materials

The tireless commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens means that most challenges are unsuccessful.

However, according to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, “This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials. Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs.”

ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented 1,247 demands to censor library books and resources in 2023 (see an index of book bans from 2022-2023 here). The number of titles targeted for censorship rose 65% in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by OIF in more than 20 years of tracking: 4,240 book titles were targeted for removal from schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022, when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship. Titles representing the voices and experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47% of those targeted in censorship attempts.

Attempts to censor more than 100 titles were documented in the following states: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

PEN America, created in 1922, is a nonprofit organization to protect free expression in the United States. PEN protects the freedom to “create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others”. PEN offers a multitude of resources for writers and creators of content to protect the power of words. 

Learn more about PEN’s work with book bans, disinformation, educational intimidation and censorship, AI’s implications for free speech, campus free speech, writers at risk advocacy, online abuse and digital security, or global free expression.

Stop by and check out the Banned Books Display at Murphy Library near the elevators on the ground floor!

There’s also an online guide to book banning and censorship on the Murphy Library website. 

Here’s a YouTube video on the history of censorship!