The Shadow Hanging Over "Freedom to Read Week" [Revised and Corrected]

Why the conversation about "banned" books shouldn't be limited to titles challenged by the public, but also include collection decisions by librarians. An op-ed from FAIR in Libraries.

[Image: DeepAI Image Generator]

[Note to readers: This post has been revised as of March 7th 2025 to correct a methodological error that was pointed out by a pseudonymous reader, to the effect that our claims regarding print holdings of three titles in Canadian public libraries were inaccurate. This was owed to the authors’ mistaken reliance on OCLC FirstSearch results as a dependable source for holdings in Canadian public libraries, when they are not. The authors thank the reader for this correction and apologize to our readers for the error. In this light, the revised post makes much more limited claims regarding FirstSearch results. The original text has been maintained with strikethrough indicated and new text added].

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As we mark Freedom to Read Week (February 23 – March 2, 2025), we should acknowledge this freedom requires unfettered access to books and ideas in public libraries. To provide such access, librarians are committed to upholding the principle of intellectual freedom, defined by the Canadian Federation of Library Associations/Fédération canadienne des associations de bibliothèques (CFLA-FCAB) as “the interlocking freedoms to hold opinions and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Freedom to Read Week encourages Canadians to “think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom”.

This freedom is a controversial one. Public and school libraries are making headlines over challenges to library materials—challenges that come from across the political spectrum. While requests on the part of library users to remove or relocate books have long been a normal part of managing a library collection, these challenges have grown more organized over the past decade, and the rhetoric around them far more heated. This is especially the case regarding children’s books dealing with sexuality and gender identity, as highlighted in the February 7th Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Fifth Estate report, “A Shadow War on Libraries”.

Yet there is another “shadow” being cast over Canadians’ right to intellectual freedom, and it comes from within libraries themselves.

According to the CFLA-FCAB’s code of ethics, “librarians and other information workers are strictly committed to neutrality and an unbiased stance regarding collection, access and service.” Despite this professional and ethical commitment to neutrality, some librarians adopt an activist stance and instead advocate for libraries to take a stand on social and political issues, convinced that neutrality and intellectual freedom not only conflict with social justice but contribute to injustice. When librarians shadow ban by refusing to purchase books that contradict their own ideological commitments, they are effectively telling users, “we know what’s right and don’t trust you enough to read on all sides of an issue to make up your own mind”.

The result is that books to which these librarians object—most notably Abigail Shrier’s 2020 book Irreversible Damage, investigating the surge in young women seeking gender transition,

This practice of pre-censorship is called “shadow banning” because these types of “book bans” are invisible to the public, effectively hidden from view. Sarah Hartman-Caverly, writing at this Substack, describes this as our profession’s “insider threat problem”, noting that

[w]hen library workers’ professional actions interfere with our community members’ freedoms to read and view, to access “all points of view on current and historical issues,” and to enjoy privacy and confidentiality (including intellectual privacy) in the exercise of their freedom of expression, those actions constitute an insider threat to the intellectual freedom mission in libraries.

She stresses however that, while evidence for this “insider threat” is mostly anecdotal, it has been noted in the scholarly literature, citing the 2022 article “Intellectual Freedom: Waving and Wavering Across Three National Contexts” by Shannon Oltmann, Toni Samek and Louise CookeView , who note that “there is a certain proportion of librarians who do not adhere to the promises of the [International Federation of Library Associations’] Statement [on Intellectual Freedom], thereby creating an ethical void and, arguably, although with positive intentions, committing a disservice to their patrons” (p. 446).

Libraries have made the news in recent years for their questionable weeding practices, including an Ontario School district library purging and burning books deemed to depict Indigenous people in a negative light, while another Ontario School District issued an “equity based” directive to review items published prior to 2008 according to established criteria that was interpreted by some school librarians to mean imply removing all such books entirely, leaving shelves largely empty.

An OCLC FirstSearch inquiry reveals that print editions of Irreversible Damage are held in only four of Canada’s 642 public library systems,

A particular flashpoint has been Abigail Shrier’s 2020 book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, which investigates the causes behind and impacts of the huge surge in young women seeking gender transition. Freedom to Read Week acknowledges that it is the most-challenged book in 18 years of data gathering—are rarely purchased. Despite the fact that the book was hailed by The Economist as one of its “Books of the Year” for 2020, making it (one would think) an essential purchase for most adult collections more than 240 progressive Canadian librarians signed an open letter in 2021 condemning the CFLA-FCAB Intellectual Freedom Committee’s statement supporting librarians who had upheld viewpoint diversity by keeping Shrier’s book on the shelves. In Maine, when the Blue Hill Public library faced harsh criticism from some members of the community for having accepted a donated copy of the book, its Director Rich Boulet wrote to the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom for support, only to be “ghosted” in return.

Shadow banning is often framed by the justification of protecting vulnerable groups from harm. Authors writing about disfavoured sides of highly contested issues are often referred to as “bigots” or proponents of “misinformation” and “hate”, their books rejected by selectors as a consequence.

This is likely the fate of such underrepresented titles as the Aristotle Foundation’s The 1867 Project: Why Canada Should be Cherished, not Cancelled (print edition held in five public libraries), and the edited collection Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools), which controversially questions the narrative—based on anomalies detected by ground-penetrating radar—that the bodies of 215 children are buried at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (in print in three public libraries).

A potent example of this may be found in the case of gender identity books aimed at children. Perhaps the best-known of these is the autobiographical picture book I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings with illustrations by Shelagh McNicholas, which recounts the early childhood and social gender transition of reality show star Jazz Jennings. OCLC First Search records its availability in 25 Canadian libraries, with 1,690 copies listed worldwide. The gender identity educational title It Feels Good to Be Yourself by Theresa Thorn and Noah Grigni, is shown in FirstSearch to be held in 16 Canadian libraries, with 1,221 holdings worldwide. Both titles are frequently challenged (see here and here). By contrast, the body-positive picture book My Body is Me by Rachel Rooney with illustrations by Jessica Ahlberg (which its publisher Transgender Trend describes as “celebrat[ing] similarities and differences while challenging sex stereotypes”) is listed in FirstSearch as being held only at Vancouver Public Library, with a mere 6 additional copies listed worldwide. Unlike the previous two titles, Rooney’s book has been condemned as “hateful” by activists, with author Rooney suffering intense backlash from the publishing and book trade industries, including online smears and vilification.

Even granting the limitations of FirstSearch’s ability to function as a union catalogue (especially in the Canadian context), these results are suggestive of progressive bias.

Although ostensibly well-intentioned, this impulse to protect readers or side with particular constituencies results in collections biased towards specific political and ideological priorities, which limits opportunities for library users to discover different perspectives and to decide for themselves, thereby preventing informed debate.

In 2024, Cathy Simpson, CEO of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library, was fired by the Library’s board after writing an op-ed which (much like this one) pointed out the tendency for librarians promoting Freedom to Read Week to highlight only those books challenged by conservatives but not those opposed by progressives.

The task of defending freedom to read is indeed a complex and challenging one, and requires an open dialogue and debate between those with opposing views. In the spirit of Freedom to Read Week (and in the United States, Banned Books Week, October 5th-11th), visit your local public library and see if diverse perspectives on controversial issues are represented in the collection. If there’s a book you’d like to see added, fill in a request that it be purchased.

Most of all, take the freedom to read personally; after all, public libraries exist to serve the entire community, meaning they have a duty to uphold your intellectual freedom, and your right to a diversity of viewpoints, so you can come to your own conclusions.

(FAIR in Libraries supports the Freedom to Read Week principles of intellectual freedom, freedom of expression, freedom to read, and resistance to censorship. In addition, FAIR in Libraries supports the pluralistic principles of viewpoint diversity, and library neutrality, as well as human individuality and autonomy. For more information, please contact us at libraries[at]fairforall[dot]org).

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