Video Transcript:
Maya Stone: Each year, thousands of books are pulled off of shelves either in bans or because of challenges of content… Patricia Giles is a librarian and organizer of Banned Books Week at Syracuse University…
Patricia Giles: Banned Books Week is a week in which we recognize and think deeply about book bans and book challenges.
Stone: Books being banned follow a wide variety of genres, with one of them being romance. The Lit Actually bookstore is one of the stores that hosts activities to recognize the category of books.
Kelly Vann: Having a week to recognize Banned Books Week is really important to just bring visibility to the issue. We are hearing about almost 12,000 books being pulled from shelves versus the nearly 7,000 books from last year. It’s just drawing attention to something and putting the decision back into the ‘consumers’ and the ‘readers’ hands.
Stone: This years theme for Banned Book Week is “Let books be–Protect the freedom to read.” Banned Books Week started in response to books being banned across schools, bookstores and libraries.
Giles: I think on the school level, they probably, school libraries probably have the greatest stress on them when they are challenged by parents. And so they need our support to from the from the field of libraries and librarianship, we have to support each other regardless of what kind of libraries we’re in.
Stone: While books are being banned or challenged, libraries and bookstores are hosting activities throughout the week to raise awareness.
Vann: It really is a community of trying to draw awareness to this campaign and creating energy around it so that we can, you know, take some of those books off of that banned books list and put them on our shelves so that people can come and find a place for safety and engagement and creativity within our own stores.
Stone: Banned Books Week brings together the community in different ways for the same cause. Maya Stone, NCC News.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Banned Books Week recognizes titles that have been taken off the shelf because of challenges from organized groups. The theme for this year is “Let Books Be–Protect the Freedom to Read.”
Banned Books Week was created in 1982 as a response to the number of books being challenged in schools, bookstores and libraries. Bans take place over a wide variety of genres from classics to romance.
Lit Actually bookstore owner, Kelly Vann, said there has been a major increase in bans.
“We are hearing about almost 12,000 books being pulled from shelves versus the nearly 7,000 books from last year,” Vann said.
According to PEN America, the 12,000 books being pulled from shelves set a record for the most books banned in a single year.
Syracuse University Librarian Patricia Giles said there is added stress on teachers and librarians.
“I think on the school level, school libraries probably have the greatest kind of stress on them when they are challenged by the parents,” Giles said, “They need our support from the field of libraries and librarianship, we have to support each other regardless of what kind of libraries we’re in.”
With 19 independent bookstores in Central New York, Vann said every store is doing something to raise awareness.
“It’s not just, you know a singular store or singular effort,” said Vann.”It really is a community of trying to draw awareness to this campaign and creating energy around it so that we can, you know, take some of those books off of that banned books list.”
Libraries and bookstores host events for the communtiy to learn about the category and why they are being banned.