Researching Banned and Challenged Books

Student projects researching the reasons why a particular book has been challenged or banned are common writing assignments in both language arts and social studies classes. This page provides a guide to  some of the best sources for these assignments.  Many are available print only and may be in the local public library.

Definitions

The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) explains the difference between a "banned book" and a "challenged book" as:

"A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.  A banning is the removal of those materials.  Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others.  Due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection."

Key Resources

The premier resources for researching why a particular title was challenged or banned are the publications of ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom.  The Office maintains information on which books are challenged and why and regularly publishes this information in the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, where there may also be discussion of the events surrounding a challenge, and in a compilation published about every three years, most recently in Banned Books: Challenging our Freedom to Read, edited by Robert P. Doyle (also referred to as the 2014 BBW Resource Guide).  Additional resources were used to compile earlier editions of "Banned Books"; these are listed in the publication's bibliography, and included on a list of books on censorship.

''Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read, 2014 Edition'' may be purchased through the ALA Store. It should also be available at your local library

The citations for the two most current print editions are:

Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. Chicago, IL: American Library Association, 2014.  
Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. Chicago, Ill: American Library Association, 2010.
(Note: a number of libraries treat "Banned Books" as a serial.)

Having trouble finding any information on a book? It's been brought to our attention that there are some resources online that mistakenly list titles that have actually never been challenged or banned. Full details can be found at the Ask the ALA Library blog post, Ban Pooh?

 

Where to find information if you don't have "Banned Books"

General bibliography: As noted above, there are a number of print resources on censored books.  Many of the titles included on the list are included in the bibliography in "Banned Books" as resources for historical information for older titles.  Updated editions to those have been included, along with similar recent titles.  The list also includes a few general books on intellectual freedom in libraries as resources for understanding the importance of defending the freedom to read. Most libraries should have one or more of the titles listed.


 

Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century - Information on 46 classics

Banned Books Week, an information site maintained by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

Banned Book Week, developed by Marshall University Libraries.

Mapping Censorship, a map is drawn from cases documented by ALA and the Kids' Right to Read Project, a collaboration of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) reports censorship challenges received by its Support for the Learning and Teaching of English office.

 

Online Books Page, from the University of Pennsylvania Library  has links to challenged books in the public domain.http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html
 

Wikipedia's entry: "List of books banned by governments"

Finally, meet with your local librarian who can help you access databases of periodical literature about book challenges.

 

For lists of challenged books, without the challenge history, please see

Frequently Challenged Books includes the most frequently challenged lists, along with a limited amount of challenge information on those books most often the target of censorship.   Please note: the Office for Intellectual Freedom has only been collecting data about banned banned books since 1990, so there are not any lists of frequently challenged books or authors before that date.

Some of the more well-known banned and challenged books appear in a joint online project with Google Books, Celebrate Your Freedom to Read - Explore Banned Books.

 

Last updated May 11, 2016.
http://www.ala.org/tools/atoz/researching-banned-and-challenged-books
www.ala.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-40
48667
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:6QSECC7V3CJFADWD454JFTRLXXYZLEYN
<urn:uuid:fc5df263-dce5-4eed-9333-e1188d36f396>
2016-09-28T11:35:51Z
216.80.72.139
sha1:KJ6VGBIVH5DWWZ7LB4OUNV5TEAZ5QMQT
<urn:uuid:3071ba28-f156-4dba-b28b-b581d5e5cb47>
http://www.ala.org/tools/atoz/researching-banned-and-challenged-books
response
<urn:uuid:5293ba0f-7aff-4386-8b48-b4a3ec8fe459>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-40
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf