US saw record high of 5,668 books banned in libraries in 2025, says agency

smithoc•about 2 hours ago

Important to note that "banned" here means "a school chose not to have this book in their library".

It's an annoying abuse of language. "Banned Books" has historically meant people are getting arrested for possessing the books or stores are being prevented from selling it or publishers are being prevented from producing it.

This is essentially a clickbait title for "People disagree about what is age-appropriate content for a public school to provide to children".

js2•4 minutes ago

[delayed]

torben-friis•about 2 hours ago

Depends on your definition of people:

>The report also found that challenges are becoming more coordinated and politically driven: 92% came from pressure groups, decision-makers or government officials, compared with 72% in 2024. By contrast, 2.7% were attributed to parents and 1.4% to individual library users.

So this isn't librarians, parents or even neighbours deciding something isn't appropriate.

The article also seems to refer to libraries in general, as opposed to school libraries alone, except on a specific paragraph.

rahimnathwani•30 minutes ago

Why do you assume librarians aren't part of the 'government official's group?

like_any_other•about 1 hour ago

The article is indeed very careful to never tell us how much of this is school libraries.

KumaBear•18 minutes ago

I mean you can find scripture and if anyone has read that it’s not for children. Yet no objections

ImPostingOnHN•about 2 hours ago

This is incorrect. The article is talking about book bans at public libraries and school libraries alike.

The linked censorship search portal [0] lets you filter by "# Count of Challenges at Public Libraries" > 0.

0 – https://www.ala.org/bbooks/censorship-search-portal

barbazoo•about 1 hour ago

I'd call that "not making publicly available" via the library system rather than banning. As parent said, you can still buy these books and share with or sell them to each other.

ImPostingOnHN•about 1 hour ago

I'd call it "banning books from public libraries", since that's a clear description. Contrary to what GP claimed, this is indeed public libraries, not just school libraries.

Whatever you want to call it, IMO public libraries shouldn't ban books, especially based on some radical PAC's opinions about what jesus would want or whatever.

yeah879846•about 1 hour ago

List?

like_any_other•about 1 hour ago

Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail, or White Identity by Jared Taylor, never make these banned book lists. They don't have to be "banned" - libraries simply make them unavailable, so they get to control information, without being the kind of horrible people that would censor or ban a book. How virtuous!

JuniperMesos•3 minutes ago

Any given library is failing to make most books that have ever been printed in human history available, because it would be completely intractable to do so. Any given library management can always claim that a book they don't make available because they disapprove of it, is in the vast class of books they haven't even thought about including in their library. People will only even bring a complaint if a specific book becomes politically salient for some reason - which might be because a book was available at a library and then was removed; and this means that banned book lists are inherently political documents that serve to highlight specific books that the list-compiler thinks are unfairly suppressed. There's no meaningful difference between a library not stocking Gender Queer and a library not stocking Camp of the Saints; all that matters is what the political sensibilities are of the person or organization putting together the banned book list and deciding what titles to include on it.

cyanydeez•about 2 hours ago

We wont need books in the future. You'll just open up your Red OpenAI or Blue Claude app and ask it for a new story !

KumaBear•17 minutes ago

No you will tell it make X into a live action tv show.

US saw record high of 5,668 books banned in libraries in 2025, says agency

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