I’m curious about where I can find public lists of banned books across various states in the US. Are these lists openly accessible to the public, or do they mainly remain internal documents shared between the government and libraries?
The American Library Association posts “most challenged” lists, unfortunately not by state. Here is the top ten for 2024, and if you scroll all the way down, there’s also links to the top 100 from each of the past 3 decades (if you want historical data). The ALA has an Office of Intellectual Freedom that absolutely collects all the challenged/banned book data, but I couldn’t find it posted anywhere (closest is this, but more recent years are missing… can probably supplement with here).
This might be useful https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/
I remember seeing another site that went into amazing detail about not just what books were banned, but where and for what (stated) reasons. I can’t find it right now, but will post again if I do. It was basically a huge spreadsheet!
EDIT Actually, I think this was it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1am1vKU3MR1209AanJVqySFtRYe3IiB1k/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107625701392691841725&rtpof=true&sd=true
Also, some info about it: https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/book_censorship_database_magnusson
I’m in NYC They do a Banned Books Week here.
A better question is how to mirror banned books and help make them available to everyone.
They are probably already mirrored in Anna’s Archie. Anyone can help with the load by seeding some of the archive’s torrents.
