Last Updated on April 24, 2023, 10:16 am ET
The American Library Association (ALA) is calling on readers everywhere to take action today in support of free expression and against book censorship. ALA and its members have led the fight against banned books for decades. Following 2022, a record-setting year of book bans and challenges in public libraries and schools across the US, the ALA campaign “Unite Against Book Bans” has new toolkits, talking points, sample language for letters to elected leaders, and more to galvanize the movement to safeguard access to knowledge.
Libraries are community-centered organizations, staffed by experts who engage deeply to select, exhibit, and program around materials that reflect and enrich their communities, create spaces for interaction, and pathways to full and equitable participation in society. Today’s book bans are not just growing in alarming numbers, they are disproportionately targeting books by and about diverse groups, including books about race, sexuality, and gender identity. These bans deprive readers of the opportunity to see their own stories reflected and to experience others’ stories—what books provide to strengthen human connection and capacity.
TIME magazine, in creating its 2023 list of the world’s most influential people, shined a bright light on the importance of free expression and the freedom to read by including Tracie D. Hall, the first Black woman executive director of the American Library Association, and Judy Blume, the trailblazing author of young adult (YA) fiction who has helped raise generations of young people to think critically about themselves and others. Hall, wrote author and journalist Min Jin Lee in TIME, “has labored to protect the democratic ideals of freedom of thought, assembly, press, public education, dissent, speech, and above all the freedom to imagine a liberated world through the word.” And Blume, whose books have been banned many times over the years, wrote actor and author Molly Ringwald, has helped “millions of young women to enter young adulthood a lot more informed and a little less afraid.”
Academic and intellectual freedom, and equity and inclusion, are core values of the Association of Research Libraries. To quote our colleague Tracie Hall, “free people read freely.”
