San Diego library offers digital access to banned books
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The San Diego Public Library is fighting book bans by giving teens across the country access to banned books with digital library cards.
Why it matters: There's been a dramatic rise in book bans and challenges in recent years, as titles are being "systematically removed from school libraries across the country" amid political and legal pressure, according to the literary advocacy group PEN America.
- Public libraries are also facing more pressure from elected officials, board members and administrators to pull books from shelves, particularly those with racial and LGBTQ+ themes and characters.
Zoom in: Through the Books Unbanned program, teens and young adults living in other states can check out e-books and audiobooks from the San Diego library's collection of about 250 banned or restricted titles for free.
- About 6,000 people have registered for these online library cards, with about 1,500 checkouts over the past two years, according to Patrick Stewart, CEO of the Library Foundation SD, the nonprofit that pays for the books.
- The bulk of books that have been checked out are by and about LGBTQ+ experiences and people of color, he said. "All Boys Aren't Blue" and "Gender Queer: A Memoir" are two of the top titles.
- "Young people, old people and everyone in between should be able to see themselves in the stacks of a library, not be told that they don't exist," Stewart said.
The other side: Supporters of some of the book bans argue that parents should make the call on their child's exposure to such materials, not schools or libraries.
- "This isn't a 'culture war' debate over censorship, but an inevitable, even healthy argument that boils down to which books, for which reason, at what age, and in what venue," Daniel Buck, a senior visiting fellow for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, wrote in 2023.
The intrigue: Stewart also framed the issue around intellectual freedom, and described the bans as a "chokehold on families' ability to choose for themselves the literature that they or their children have access to."
The big picture: Tens of thousands of people from all 50 states have checked out books from public libraries in Brooklyn, Boston, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Seattle through the Unbanned Books program that launched in 2022.
State of play: More than 6,870 books were removed from school libraries last academic year, with Florida, Texas and Tennessee recording the highest rates, according to PEN America's annual "Banned in the USA" report released earlier this month.
- Locally, school and public libraries have faced recent book challenges. Escondido Union School District closed its libraries to audit its collection and pulled two books after challenges in 2023.
- This year, California barred public libraries from banning books related to race, gender identity, or sexual orientation. The law, which went into effect in January, protects library staff from being fired or disciplined for their decisions on books and programming.