‘A Difficult Time for Libraries’: ALA’s 2025 State of America’s Libraries Report Details Ongoing Censorship Threat
Released annually, the ALA's State of America's Libraries Report documents the achievements of America’s libraries and library workers, and outlines the challenges they face.
By the numbers, the number of censorship attempts tracked by the American Library Association declined in 2024. But in its 2025 State of America’s Libraries Report, released on April 7, ALA officials said book banning attempts remain at record levels.
"By any measure, 2024 represented a difficult time for libraries, library workers, and all those who champion the freedom to read,” writes Deborah Caldwell Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “The number of demands to censor and restrict library resources remained at record levels, with 821 attempts to censor library books and materials across all library types reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom in 2024. While this is a decrease from 2023, when 1,247 attempts to censor library materials were reported to ALA, it is still the third-highest number of book challenges recorded by ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom since it began documenting library censorship in 1990.”
Released annually, the ALA's State of America's Libraries Report documents the achievements of America’s libraries and library workers, and outlines the challenges they face. And this year’s report—which looks back on 2024—once again leads with how the organized right wing political movement to ban books has evolved over the last four years.
According to the report, ALA officials tracked challenges to nearly 2,452 unique titles in 2024, the vast majority of which once again were books addressing “the lives, experiences, and concerns of LGBTQIA+ persons, or books addressing the lives, experiences, and concerns of Black persons, Indigenous persons, and persons of color.” And while that number is down from the high watermark of 2024, Caldwell-Stone warns that the numbers don’t tell the whole story.
“Not reflected in these numbers are the relentless attacks on library workers, educators, and community members who stand up to the censors and defend the freedom to read,” she writes. “These attacks are creating an environment of fear in which library workers are afraid to buy books or report censorship. Barriers to user access grow ever higher, with books under lock and key in ‘adult only’ rooms that require ID to access, held in staff areas and available only upon request, or require parental permission, if the materials they’re looking for are even still available. We are witnessing an effort to eliminate entire genres and categories of books from library shelves in pursuit of a larger goal of placing politics and religion over the well-being and education of young people and everyone’s right to access and find information in our libraries.”
On the positive side, the report notes that “freedom to read” laws have been enacted in several states, including California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington adopted, and 16 state legislatures are currently considering similar legislation.
The full report is available here.
