censorship

  • Book Bingo NW 2025: Censorship

    Book Bingo NW 2025: Censorship

    While Summer Book Bingo has featured “Banned” as a category for many years (2015-2017) and “Banned or challenged book” in 2022, we still get reader requests to feature “Banned Books” as a category every year. As book bans are increasing, it’s not surprising that readers want to highlight this, but we mostly see the same… Continue reading

  • Know Your Rights: Intellectual Freedom & Libraries

    The public library as an institution is charged with providing access to information, regardless of content. In doing so, the library stands firm in upholding the First Amendment and the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights. This is why, as Jo Godwin famously stated, “A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.”… Continue reading

  • Book Banning Lives!

    Librarians, almost universally, are hostile to the idea of denying access to information. Every year, we honor the survival of literature against the onslaught of book banners and information suppressors with displays and programming to call the community’s attention to the fight. There is even a week set aside to memorialize what we regard as… Continue reading

  • Why was this book banned?

    If you’ve been to your local library sometime this month, you’ve probably seen a display of books that have been challenged or banned in libraries, bookstores, and communities at some point in history. Created in honor of Banned Books Week (Sept. 27 through Oct. 4), these displays may have made you wonder why these books… Continue reading

  • Reading those censored books

    Every year, the American Library Association puts out a list of the most challenged books of the previous year, plus a distressingly thick catalog of banned and challenged books. This article at The Onion made me think about all the various banned books that most of us really never read (or read for the wrong… Continue reading

  • Celebrating the freedom to read for over two millennia

    This month and next all over Seattle (and all over the country), libraries will be putting up displays and posters and hosting events in honor of Banned Books Week (Sept 27 – Oct 4). The annual event, started in 1982 by the American Library Association, is a celebration of your freedom to read, and an important reminder that… Continue reading