As Banned Books Week – an event drawing focus to and challenging book banning by the state and federal legislature – comes to a close, Iowa City community librarians are speaking out for the right to materials such as print books and even e-books or audiobooks as intellectual freedoms, which are threatened by funding cuts to libraries around the country.
Banned Books Week took place on Oct. 5-11 this year. The American Library Association established Banned Books Week in 1982. In Iowa, the week opens discussions for communities to be aware of the resources the library can provide and to promote the First Amendment rights of privacy and supporting and accessing libraries.
“It’s really more about education awareness,” Sam Helmick, community and access services coordinator at the Iowa City Public Library, said. “Libraries have procedures and policies in place so that the community can come together and reconsider if a book is in the right place, has the right label, and is really useful.”
Alison Ames Galstad, the library director at the Coralville Public Library, said a growing trend in legislation is to ban books written by or including authors or characters of minorities.
“What we’re seeing in terms of the identical legislation being proposed in multiple states is this trend to ban the voices of black authors, to ban materials that represent the LGBTQ+ populations, and I think that is a really primary focus,” Galstad said.
The ALA interprets First Amendment law and the Library Bill of Rights, promoting libraries and library education worldwide.
Helmick serves as the President of the American Library Association and said the organization has tracked unfair and inadequate challenges to books.
“The American Library Association has attracted about 72 percent of these calls to challenge and censor are coming from special interest groups that don’t even live in the communities that they’re challenging,” Helmick said. “And often those materials that they’re challenging don’t even exist in the catalog or the collection of the library, it’s like you’re cutting and pasting from lists online.”
Helmick said it is important to recognize that tax dollars in support of policy enable censorship to happen in the U.S. and communities across the nation.
“And so the price of e-books, any legislation that would cut library funding, those are sort of intellectual freedom elements that the American public needs to be made more aware of,” Helmick said.
According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, congressionally mandated dollars that were intended to come back to Iowa libraries were put on hold, leading to a lack of state and federal taxes going toward supporting 543 libraries across the state and their services.
Recent legislation, such as Iowa House File 718, has decreased funding for libraries. According to EveryLibrary, the tax bill eliminated the ability to levy up to $0.27 per $1,000 of taxable valuation for supporting over 90 libraries and many museums in Iowa. Libraries and museums now have to be funded from general budgets without voter-approved funding.
Helmick said 97 communities have lost this funding.
“We have concerns about losing the federal funding and with tariffs impacting everything from books and materials to shipping material to get books to us,” Helmick said.
Amid the funding reductions in Iowa libraries, Banned Books Week serves as a time for Iowa libraries to communicate on the issue of censorship.
“The Iowa City Public Library is an educational space when it comes to Banned Books Week,” Helmick said. “Our work is to give you [community members] wonderful library resources so you can make informed decisions and you can inform your life with goals, whether they’re recreational, educational, entrepreneurial, or economic.”
Galstad describes the library’s banned books display as a way to bring awareness and open discussions about the topic of banned books.
“It’s part of our mission to make sure that [there is] something in the library for everyone and that every individual can see themselves and resources that they can find at the public library,” Galstad said. “We want to make sure we provide those resources and that outside forces, legislative forces, or special interest groups aren’t dictating what can be on the shelves.”