Planned to coincide with Banned Books Week in early October, the Los Angeles County Library system is expanding a digital library card that grants ebook access to users throughout California ― a first for the library.
LA County Library’s collection development director, Wendy Crutcher, told the LA Daily News that book banning and book restricting is on the rise across the country and not excluding Southern California.
“If other areas of California are restricting access to materials, the LA County Library would be there to provide that access,” Crutcher said.
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the expansion of the digital library card from just LA County residents to residents of all cities and counties in the state this past June.
Meanwhile, library officials are talking to the Brooklyn Public Library and officials in Seattle’s library system, which have expanded digital access well beyond their cities.
In Brooklyn, the library has signed up 6,500 new digital card users from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, since the launch in April 2022, said Fritzi Bodenheimer, spokesperson. Their program is open to users aged 13 to 21 because most of the book bans affect young people and are often from school libraries, she explained.
Crutcher said the county library is focusing on extending access to youth aged 13 to 18. The action calls for expanding digital library cards to both youth and adults throughout the state but the scope remains to be seen. “Teens are being restricted in access to what they can read by school librarians and school curriculum,” Crutcher said. “There are more barriers in place for teens accessing this information than for adults.”
In Southern California, the Burbank Unified School District in 2020 banned inclusion in its curriculum of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, presumably because they contain use of the “N-word,” according to a letter sent in objection by PEN America, an acronym for poets, essayists and novelists that for 100 years has supported and defended free expression through literature.
The supervisors’ motion said they’ve seen efforts to challenge books that describe racial conditions and slavery in the 19th century using language that is not politically correct today, as well as books related to LGBTQ+ issues.
In the San Ramon Valley Unified School District in the Bay Area, and Kingsburg Elementary Charter School District in the Central Valley, a book can be immediately removed in response to a single parent challenge.
Pushing back on the trend, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond issued a letter to school districts across the state cautioning against book bans.
Conservative groups marched in protest of a library book-reading that explained LGBTQ+ families at Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood. A transgender teacher’s LGBTQ flag was burned, which was labeled a hate crime by the Los Angeles Police Department. A demonstration occurred outside Glendale Unified School District over similar issues. There, police in riot gear broke up scuffles between groups clashing over the issue of teaching children about gay sexuality.
Parents opposed to the LGBTQ storybook reading in North Hollywood said they were not against LGBTQ people, but they didn’t want their children to learn about them from the school. Los Angeles Unified School District did not ban the book and continued the program despite protests, encouraging more LGBTQ programs at other campuses.
While many states and other parts of California are restricting books about the LGBTQ+ community, as well as books about the Black experience in America, LA County wants to expand their access, said Horvath. “I am deeply troubled by a rise in bans on books that uplift the experience of LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and historically marginalized communities,” she said in a statement.