Through analyzing content ban legislation, public hearings, public reports on student searches, and interviews with librarians from across the United States, we found that a vocal minority of activists are using "pornography" as a bogeyman to erode free speech and information access in schools and libraries.
“Neo-Censorship in U.S. Libraries: An Investigation Into Digital Content Suppression,” a new Library Futures report, dives into this underreported area of library censorship–database bans that restrict youth access to e-books, research resources, and other digital content.
Our research includes an investigation into an incident in Utah in Fall 2018, when more than 650,000 elementary and high school students were blocked from accessing e-resources to do their schoolwork in an abrupt, overnight decision.
Even when access to the censored library database was restored one month later, the state began limiting access to certain keywords and monitoring student searches. Utah was a bellwether in a rising trend of attempts to censor library content, with real harm to the students it serves.
While bans on beloved print books are often more visible, challenges to databases and digital collections risk restricting children from viewing a wide range of content–from breast cancer awareness to resources for identifying and reporting sexual abuse.
Pulling a book from a digital shelf is one form of censorship; immediately blocking all access to thousands of documents due to threats presents a different and perhaps more insidious kind of harm.
Though most of the legislation we analyzed for this report was not enrolled, and while it's clear that content bans are often in violation of the First Amendment, their very existence fulfills their purpose: by gaining a high-profile movement, they have in some ways already succeeded in empowering the pressure groups that seek to restrict and erase the voices, stories, and experiences of marginalized communities.
As libraries prepare for continued assaults on their budgets and the civil rights of their patrons, counteracting this strategy first requires uncovering it. Read the report.
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