Book challenges at record high: report

Book challenges in school and public libraries have reached a record high in 2023, according to preliminary data released by the American Library Association (ALA).

In the first eight months of 2023, there have been 695 attempts to challenge library materials, affecting 1,915 unique titles. This marks a 20 percent increase in book challenges from the same time frame in 2022.

“These attacks on our freedom to read should trouble every person who values liberty and our constitutional rights,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “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.”

The ALA defines a book challenge as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.”

Along with a record-high jump in such challenges, the data also shows a change in where they are happening.

In 2022, only 16 percent of book challenges were in public libraries during this reporting period. Now, challenges in public libraries comprise 49 percent. 

“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. This places politics over the well-being and education of young people and everyone’s right to access and use the public library,” Caldwell-Stone said. 

The data release comes ahead of the ALA’s Banned Books Week 2023, which starts at the beginning of October. The theme for this year is “Let Freedom Read.”