If you’ve followed the news about the unprecedented increase in book bans and challenges nationwide, you’ll be happy to know that The Seattle Public Library is doing something about it.
On April 29, we announced that we are joining Brooklyn Public Library to offer a free Books Unbanned e-card for teens and young adults (ages 13 to 26) across the nation who live outside of our service area. With a Books Unbanned card, young people can access our entire collection of more than 700,000 e-books and audiobooks, with some parameters (maximum of 10 checkouts and five holds).
You can sign up and get access within 1-2 days on The Seattle Public Library’s website at www.spl.org/BooksUnbanned.
Books Unbanned is an effort to champion intellectual freedom and the right to read by doing what public libraries do – providing free and unrestricted access to information, ideas and diverse viewpoints.
“If we don’t stand up for the First Amendment,” as Chief Librarian Tom Fay said in this Scripps News story, “then I don’t know where we stand up as a profession.”
More than 1,500 young people across the nation have signed up so far, and the messages they’ve sent are testament to the range of reasons for why expanding access is critical.
We’ve heard from young people who are physically disabled and can’t get to a library, whose neighborhood isn’t served by a library, who are worried about bans in their state and want access to a diverse range of books and authors, and who want to “use my free time to learn and think rather than scrolling through a phone.”
We’ve also received positive responses from people in Seattle, who don’t qualify for Books Unbanned (they can already get a full-access library card at www.spl.org/card), but support the program. (Thank you!)
Books Unbanned is generously funded by The Seattle Public Library Foundation, and will not affect Seattle patrons’ access to our collections. (We know how much our Seattle patrons care about their hold times!) The Foundation is funding the Books Unbanned e-card through its Equity & Access Fund.
Please consider spreading the word on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), by sharing the webpage (www.spl.org/BooksUnbanned) with young people in other parts of the country and by sharing the coverage that Books Unbanned has received (KUOW, Seattle Times, Book Riot, Scripps News, King 5 and KSTW.
Check out Brooklyn Public Library’s Books Unbanned program, too. They recently announced that they’ve received 100,000 checkouts in the year since their program was launched.
Have a comment about Books Unbanned? Post below or write www.spl.org/Ask.
Related links:
- Brooklyn Public Library: Books Unbanned
- Library book lists: Frequently challenged nonfiction books and Frequently challenged fiction books (see examples of books that have been challenged in the gallery at the top of page)
- ShelfTalk post: Chatting with librarians about banned books
- PEN/America report: 2023 Banned Books Update: Banned in the USA (pen.org)
- American Library Association release: Record Book Bans in 2022
- American Library Association’s Freedom to Read statement
– Elisa, Communications
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