How Librarians Found Themselves on the Front Line of the Culture War
That Librarian
The Fight Against Book Banning in America
Amanda Jones
Bloomsbury
ISBN: 9781639733545
IN 2024, THE American Library Association (ALA) reported that a record number of books—4,240 unique titles—had been challenged in the United States the previous year, a 65 percent increase over 2022. These challenges, the ALA found, were often driven by right-wing interest groups using online platforms to organize objections that bundled dozens (in some cases, over 100) titles into lists that they recommended their followers petition to have removed from their local shelves. Though in theory a (small-d) democratic process through which community members can request titles be considered for removal from library or school collections, book challenges have been recently sharpened as a partisan tool. Nearly half of the targeted titles represented the voices and experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals.
Early data suggests these numbers actually dipped slightly in 2024, with attention and outrage monopolized by the full-court media press of a presidential election. (In the two years prior to the 2024 election, stoking hysteria about libraries and their perceived threat to traditional American family values was a fertile ground for the Right.) Today, though receptiveness to censorship certainly remains, book selection has been swept up into the broader Trump-Vance agenda to remake American institutions. Libraries have still come in for some attention, however: on March 14, President Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the only federal agency dedicated to supporting US libraries, and a primary funder of library schools across the country. And a week later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office ordered the Naval Academy to identify books related to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion themes housed in the school’s Nimitz Library and to take them out of circulation.
The past few years of book challenges have been concentrated in public libraries, not school libraries (there was a 92 percent increase in titles in 2023 targeted for censorship in public libraries compared to an 11 percent increase in school libraries, per the ALA). Yet many of the figures who have become targets of internet conspiracy theories and personal defamation have been public school librarians, including Amanda Jones.
Jones is a middle school librarian in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. Her recent book, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America (2024), documents her experience being thrust into the very online controversy of book challenges in public libraries. Her voice is engaging and the story she tells is by turns dismaying, enraging, and, for the cynics among us, not all that surprising. As a 44-year resident of her hometown, Jones is shocked to find herself suddenly portrayed online as a cartoonish villain. Living (literally) next-door to her childhood home, she faces allegations of purveying sexualizing, age-inappropriate material to minors, even by parents of children she had taught and community members she had known for decades.
Jones’s introduction to the unfair and loony world of being attacked by online trolls came following her participation in a community library board meeting. In the summer of 2022, she drove to her local branch library to read, alongside nearly 30 others, some preprepared thoughts about how book censorship would degrade the public collection and do a disservice to young people and adults who deserved to find a variety of lived experiences represented in the books of their hometown libraries. In her parish, a campaign had already begun in favor of censoring an unpublicized list of “problem titles.” Those leading the charge gestured performatively to the display of Dr. Seuss picture books, as if to suggest: your child might be doing some perfectly innocent browsing and then stumble on—as Jones tartly puts it—The Joy of Sex or the Kama Sutra.
At the meeting, there were also plenty of open-minded library defenders. One attendee described her personal and religious bona fides before saying, “my personal convictions are mine, while the Public Library is for everyone and is funded by everyone in the parish, conservative, liberal, Christian, and non-Christian alike. Our libraries are safe educational spaces for all within our parish.” These are the liberals of a waning era, and the tolerant and reasonable tone of in-person conversations is quickly swamped by grotesque online attacks, centering on Jones, whose profile as a local librarian for adolescents was used by her online attackers as a fun-house mirror to recast her remarks on censorship as “grooming,” advocacy for presenting “inappropriate” materials to underage readers, and an imaginatively creative range of crimes against children. Initially, Jones was overwhelmed (one Facebook group, Citizens for a New Louisiana, posted a picture of her with a target on her head). Yet, as her book chronicles, she soon went on to mount a legal defense and filed suits against two particularly active online accusers for public defamation.
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Though justifiably enraged and hurt, Jones also proclaims righteous confusion. She is a school librarian, sure, but she spoke out against censorship as a community member. What’s more, she was addressing the role of the public library, an institution that offers resources for all ages. Her book—which is also a postmortem of how, in the United States, public sector employees better not expect to be granted a separate, personal identity—attempts to address both issues: the public defamation of a librarian accused of willfully using book selection to pervert patrons, and the broader question of how books should be selected (and challenged) in public collections.
Let’s start with the second issue, which is less successfully tackled, yet aligns with a growing suspicion in the US that there is no issue neutral enough to allow disagreement. First, Jones is impatient with the outsize expectations laid at the feet of librarians. She stresses that the extent of what librarians owe their patrons, including the care they provide to those who wander in through their library doors, is elastic but not infinite. Parents, she points out, should bear some responsibility for what their kids read, and ought to leave other parents alone to make those decisions as well. “Libraries,” she points out, “are not daycare centers,” where young readers should be dropped and allowed to peruse whatever crannies of the stacks they drift into. In other words: Yes! There are—and should be—adult books in a public library.
Second, Jones defends the process of book challenges, pointing out that libraries generally have policies in place for patrons to object to individual titles. Public libraries and schools are, after all, institutions set up to serve the public, so it is not outlandish that the public might have a role in shaping the collections. Unfortunately, these systems are easily co-opted to serve broader social and political agendas—particularly when processes intended for a community are overwhelmed by the sheer scale of scrutiny and attention funneled through sites such as Book Looks, a clearinghouse of “objectional content” started by a member of Moms for Liberty. (This offers one local-level application of the political strategy Steve Bannon has memorably called “flooding the zone.”) Though this is not Jones’s focus, it’s worth going into the weeds to understand how these processes are intended to act precisely as the kind of bridge between public employee and patron that Jones’s online trolls are calling for.
Book challenges can be initiated by individuals or groups who find a book’s content objectionable, citing reasons such as explicit language, depictions of violence, sexual content, or discussions of race, gender, or sexuality. In schools, parents, teachers, or community members can file challenges to have books removed from curricula or libraries. Libraries and schools generally have policies for responding to these challenges, which usually require the submission of a formal request (for example, the ALA’s “request for reconsideration” form) explaining their objections. The review process can differ; most often, it includes educators, librarians, administrators, and sometimes parents or community members, who determine whether to retain the book, relocate it to a different section, or remove it entirely. Both the ALA and PEN America emphasize the importance of a clear route—an established and transparent policy—for the public to challenge books, with decisions based on already-established selection criteria and the broader needs of the community, not the objections of a vocal minority.
All of this may seem dry, but book challenges have become central in a battle for libraries and librarians. (It is worth noting that book challenges did not seem to be a big concern when the Library Bill of Rights was first adopted by the ALA Council in 1939 and most recently re-ratified in 2019. This document emphasizes the library as a bulwark against censorship yet does not offer a standardized challenge process.) Today, though, library challenges are emblematic of the broader fight over directing public funds for public goods—which encompasses disagreement of what constitutes those goods, as well as the public and democratic process of how they are chosen. After all, book challenges are part of public engagement, not inherently hostile to it. In the past, the removal or recontextualization of debunked eugenicist theories or racist children’s books was critical for libraries to weed through their collections and thereby (to invoke the ALA’s language) remain “growing organisms” rather than static repositories. The question is how to prevent this fundamentally democratic credential of these public institutions from being captured and distorted. A rich selection of books is sure to contain voices that offend some patrons, but the position of the library and the librarian is to entertain public criticism without letting one vocal minority suppress the representation and choice of others. After all, what Jones is arguing for is the better representation of marginalized voices in public spaces, so as to constitute what Michael Sandel, considering similar questions in the context of college campuses, has called a “safe enough” space: one in which many, often disagreeing factions can cooperate. Yet to be open and democratic while fostering tolerance is a monumental challenge, one that has thrust librarians into the public spotlight in a way they have not experienced before.
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One of the central ironies of Jones’s experience is that—at least on (legal) paper—her ongoing court cases are suits against personal defamation, not attempts to litigate book banning in the United States. But even a local judge seemed to conflate the two issues, allowing lawyers to describe decontextualized passages from provocative books as evidence of their right to attack Jones online. To be clear: Jones did not single out any titles in her statement about censorship at the community meeting, let alone suggest adding any of these books to her middle school library. Yet the court case became a referendum on books as porn rather than the fantastical and reputation-damaging statements hurled at Jones by her enemies.
Jones’s book therefore also reads as an affecting testimony to what it is like to participate in public debate as an ordinary American today. She loses her first case (it is currently being appealed) because the judge identified her as a “public figure,” thereby reducing her legal protection from online defamation. And yet, what had transformed Jones from a public school employee into a supposedly legitimate target of public discourse was her participation in a community meeting. Speaking out—what we might have once called ordinary democratic participation—has, in Jones’s community, become an activity with the potential to undermine ordinary citizens’ rights.
In the age of social media, this transformation can be devastating. Yet Jones has a surprisingly neutral attitude toward what she calls the “socials.” Social media platforms enable the rapid proliferation of slimeball personal attacks. What emerges is a swamp of jaw-dropping slurs and hard-to-think-anyone-could-believe conspiracy theories, which Jones meticulously documents (some of the more PG-13 ones are reprinted in the book) like a well-trained archivist, hoping that this record of assault will eventually make itself useful in her case. Of course, social media is also the route by which former students and family members offer support. Jones is frequently disappointed that she does not receive more public support from this sympathetic network; still, she is relatively uncritical of the platforms themselves as infrastructure for online hate. (More traditional media comes off as relatively thoughtful and sympathetic; it is through radio and print outlets that she first told her story.)
Jones may have written her memoir as a clarion call of survival after a specific battle, yet the emotional odyssey she lays out likely reflects what public employees in many sectors are also experiencing—the surprise when liars get away with saying anything; the sense that the small-town life of her childhood is gone (or wasn’t entirely what she remembered); the feeling of betrayal when her “school family” turns out not to be brave and loyal, but work colleagues who don’t rush to put their own reputations on the line defending Jones. This idea, that work won’t love you back, may be an especially bitter pill for librarians, for whom a sense of vocation is, as Fobazi Michelle Ettarh has famously pointed out, often burnished with a patina of love, sacrifice, and the hope of some kind of emotional reciprocity from the public being served. And, as Jones notes near the end of her book, the increasing politicization of the connection between libraries and the education system—bridged, in effect, by public school librarians—suggests that the trials of librarians are likely not over yet.
Indeed, writing almost a year after the publication of her harrowing book, amid the unprecedented use of federal budget cuts to punish free speech and intervene in higher education, one can only imagine that the worst—whether it be book bans, defamation, or other attacks on vital public spaces—is yet to come. A recent example makes clear just how precarious the future is: in April 2025, North Dakota lawmakers passed a bill that would have made it a criminal offense for school or public librarians to provide materials deemed “sexually explicit,” a term left notably vague in the legislation. The bill, which passed both chambers of the state legislature, would have exposed librarians to fines or jail time merely for fulfilling their role in offering broad access to literature. It was ultimately vetoed by Governor Kelly Armstrong, who argued that the law put librarians in an “untenable situation,” trapping them in a “completely unworkable” process, even as he acknowledged concerns about age-appropriate materials. Yet the fact that such legislation advanced as far as it did underscores how deeply libraries—and the individuals who sustain them—have been drawn into broader cultural and political conflicts. If there is a lesson to take from Amanda Jones’s story, it is that librarians are not merely guardians of books, but also participants, willingly or not, in a struggle over what public life in the United States should be.
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Melina Moe is the curator of literature at Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library.