What if the Banned Books Movement Wins?
A Librarian’s Perspective, After the Bans
I used to work in a public library. I never made a ton of money, but I loved it. The kids were the best. Putting exactly the right book into a kid’s hands at exactly the right time—there was nothing like it. I still remember the day I gave Parimala a new book about an Indian American teenager. She and her sister were the only Indian kids in their school, and seeing herself in a book made her glow. That’s all gone now…
- By 2023, bomb threats to public libraries happened all the time. It didn’t take long for threats to become the real thing. Pipe bombs placed in library book drops exploded in Oakfield, Maine; Sulphur, Oklahoma; Sequim, Washington; and elsewhere. Small towns couldn’t afford the higher insurance, and thousands of communities lost their libraries.
- Once common, celebrations of multicultural holidays and customs attracted In God We Trust protesters who chanted the Second Commandment so loudly speakers could not be heard. Caregivers who didn’t want to expose their kids to conflict stayed away in droves.
- After the disfigurement of Vermont drag queen Sophie Davenport with carbolic acid at a Montpelier Pride celebration, drag queen story hours became a thing of the past.
- I remember when children’s rooms had diverse books children could see themselves and their neighbors in. Now many states have criminalized lending “inappropriate” materials, and librarians are afraid to buy books that might trigger an arrest. Teen services have virtually disappeared, as with so few “safe” books left, it became impossible to justify the staff positions.
- It used to be that a good library “had something in it to offend everybody.” New laws require libraries to buy only those books and movies that adhere to “community standards”—but they don’t say what those standards are. A single person’s complaint usually results in a book’s removal.
- For those who seek professional training, the few remaining MLS programs now offer entire classes on how to rate collections to comply with Texas’ READER Act, cloned and enacted in many other states. Students learn strategies to assess the “legitimacy” of information needs in order to suppress “prurient” use of collections, as new laws require that even adult researchers demonstrate an approved need for materials.
- Libraries that had been reorganizing their nonfiction so that books about the civil rights movement could be found with other books about U.S. history gave up and moved them back to the “social problems” section. Official subject headings were revised; “Abortion” is now “Feticide,” for instance, and “Slavery” is “Alternative immigration.”
- Libraries used to be built so that people could easily enter any section, but now new libraries are built so that only adults can go into adult sections. In the most high-tech buildings, library cards are chipped, and doors to adult collections open only to patrons whose chips indicate they are of legal age to browse. Institutions with older buildings struggle. Many attempt to staff the entrances to adult areas with bouncers, which is expensive, so many libraries have been forced to decrease their hours.
- In many states, private browsing is impossible. Library workers select the materials they feel is appropriate to each reader. Sometimes they tell patrons why they cannot borrow what they wanted, but all too often they are simply told that a book is “not available.” In others, adult sections have been emptied of books deemed “harmful to minors” rather than let them fall into young readers’ hands.
- Membership-only private libraries have popped up as people who can afford it leave their inadequate public libraries behind. Their needs taken care of, they argue to defund their local public libraries even further.
- Between the physical threats and the increasingly difficult working conditions, many experienced, trained library workers have either abandoned or been forced out of their jobs, leaving their positions to be filled by untrained staff working at the minimum wage. Some libraries have turned to LIBots, a tech company owned by the chief funder of In God We Trust.
Banning books is un-American, period.
Books can’t defend themselves—they need you to defend them
This is a glimpse into a possible future if we let it.
Don’t let it.
Humans for the Right to Read What We Want