Brooklyn Fights Book Bans With New Library Card For Teens Across U.S.

BROOKLYN, NY — Brooklyn is un-banning books for teens across the country.

The Brooklyn Public Library has launched a new library card that it says will fight increasing book bans and censorship by letting teenagers anywhere in the United States access their virtual collection.

“Access to information is the great promise upon which public libraries were founded,” BPL President Linda E. Johnson said. “We cannot sit idly by while books rejected by a few are removed from the library shelves for all."

The new campaign, dubbed Books UnBanned, comes amid a spike in censorship in the country's libraries. The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom counted more than 700 complaints last year, the most since it began keeping records more than 20 years ago, according to BPL.

With the Brooklyn library card, anyone 13 to 21 years old can sign up for a free year of access to the Brooklyn Public Library's collection of 350,000 eBooks, 200,000 audiobooks and over 100 databases, which normally would cost $50 for out-of-state cardholders.

Books frequently banned or challenged will be available without wait times, officials said.

The card will also help teens fight censorship locally by working with BPL's Intellectual Freedom Teen Council.

To apply for the card, teens can send a note to BooksUnbanned@bklynlibrary.org, or via the Library’s s teen-run Instagram account, @bklynfuture.

Brooklyn library officials specifically pointed to initiatives in Texas to account for 850 "sexually explicit or racially preferential books," including books that feature LGBTQ characters and National Book Award winner "How to be an Antiracist" by Ibram Kendi. In Tennessee, a school board voted to remove a book about the Holocaust from the curriculum for eighth-graders, officials said.

Even at home in New York, the state education department removed a tweet by the New York State Librarian after she recommended the book Gender Queer: A Memoir, Brooklyn library officials noted.