Ahead of Banned Books Week, PEN America has offered an advance look at its censorship statistics for the 2023–2024 school year, finding more than 10,000 bans recorded—nearly triple the 3,362 bans reported in the 2022–2023 school year. “Hyperbolic rhetoric about ‘porn’ in schools is being used to justify banning books about sexual violence and LGBTQ+ topics (in particular, trans identities) and books by women and nonbinary authors,” PEN representatives said in a release, "and attacks on so-called 'woke ideology' continue to lead to books on race and racism being removed."
In addition, PEN America this week released a warning about Project 2025, the controversial set of policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation that’s widely considered to be a governing blueprint for the next conservative administration. “Project 2025 is up-front about its intent to equate LGBTQ+ content in children’s books and in school curricula with pornography, and to treat making such content accessible as a crime,” a PEN release states. “If implemented, this slate of proposals would turbocharge the forces of censorship that have been running rampant in states across much of the country for the past four years.”
Ahead of Banned Books Week, which is set to run September 22-29, Monday's issue of Publishers Weekly is our first ever Freedom to Read issue. It's packed with stories from those on the front lines of this now years-long surge in book bans, and it's well worth a read. We'll have more to talk about next week when the issue drops, so please stay tuned. Oh, and bonus: the great Jerry Craft did the cover.
Meanwhile, as we reported in Publishers Weekly this week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on September 24 will rehear the appeal in a closely watched case over book banning in Llano County, Texas, and a host of amicus briefs lay out exactly what's at stake. On one side, authors, librarians, publishers, and freedom to read advocates are urging the full court to uphold Judge Robert Pitman’s March 2023 opinion and order finding that Llano County officials improperly banned several books from library shelves, while, in a brief of their own, some 18 states urge the court to find that local politicians can exercise near total control over which books and materials are allowed in schools and libraries.
Politico reports that a northeast Florida school district this week agreed to restore 36 books that were challenged and previously pulled from campus libraries in a settlement of a federal lawsuit. "The settlement reached by Nassau County school officials and a group of parents, students and the authors of the removed children’s book And Tango Makes Three marks a significant twist in the ongoing legal battles surrounding Florida’s K-12 book restrictions, which have been derided as 'book bans' by opponents. Under the agreement, that book and others such as the The Bluest Eye”by Toni Morrison and the The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel will once again be available to students after being removed last year," the article states.
Over at Book Riot, Kelly Jensen leads off her weekly censorship news roundup with a look at academic libraries. "What begins in the public schools bleeds into the public libraries. This has played out again and again throughout the last four years as right-wing players attempt to destabilize and defund public institutions of democracy," she writes. "It should come as little surprise that academic libraries are also under siege nationwide. The work of dismantling them has been seen already, particularly in legislation that outlaws diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, but in the last couple of months, these institutional cornerstones of higher education have seen it coming faster and harder."
EdSurge reports on changes resulting from Texas’ takeover of the state’s largest school district, which has led to school librarians losing their jobs. One of the changes was Houston Independent School District’s new Superintendent Mike Miles’ increased focus on test scores, which meant closing 28 school libraries and turning them into so-called team centers. “Miles is not going to target the schools where the parents have wealth and power, and that's concentrated in the schools with higher white populations,” Melissa Yarborough, a teacher at Navarro Middle School in Houston’s East End, which is home to one of the city’s historically Latino neighborhoods, said. “And that's due to a legacy of racism.”
Alaska Public Media reports that Alaska librarians are hopeful that a state agency will restore a large cut in funding for an annual grant that supports smaller rural libraries. The director of the state Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums last month told librarians around the state that this year’s Public Library Assistance grants will be $1,829, about 75% smaller than what they’ve been getting for years. “A cut that massive, even though it’s a small grant, does have a pretty big impact on a small library in rural Alaska,” Theresa Quiner, the director of the Kuskokwim Consortium Library in Bethel, said.
The University of Washington Magazine has profiled former American Library Association Executive Director Tracie D. Hall in her role as a distinguished practitioner in residence at the UW’s iSchool, where she received her master’s degree. “I hope I can be a source of the same kind of inspiration and learning that I experienced at the iSchool,” says Hall.
An editorial in the MIT Technology Review argues that Congress must step in to address the issues presented in the Internet Archive's loss in court. "If the courts won’t recognize CDL-based library lending as fair use, then the next step falls to Congress. Libraries are in crisis, caught between shrinking budgets and growing demand for services. Congress must act now to ensure that a pillar of equality in our communities isn’t sacrificed on the altar of profit."
And finally, Banned Books Week kicks off at the end of next week. For more on what's on tap, visit the ALA's Banned Books website.
The Week in Libraries is a weekly opinion and news column. News, tips, submissions, questions or comments are welcome, and can be submitted via email. Previous columns can be viewed here.
