SAN ANTONIO — Books end up in a library because they were reviewed and selected to be there. Pulling books from the shelves is usually not a quick or easy process.
Typically, librarians will reconsider books if someone brings up a concern about them. After reading the material, they decide whether to keep it on the shelf or not.
President of the Texas Library Association (TLA), Dan Burgard said all collections in Texas libraries are put together using a conscious, methodical manner to represent the needs of the libraries constituency.
Burgard said their librarians have grown concerned over recent efforts from Texas politicians to ban certain books from school libraries. While censorship is nothing new, the TLA calls the nationwide efforts of attempted censorship unprecedented.
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"We needed a way to push back against that and to remind individuals and organizations throughout the state that the right to read, the right to intellectual freedom are very important foundational concepts that are very tied in with the future of our state," Burgard said.
Tuesday, TLA launched the Texans for the Right to Read Coalition, a grassroots organization aimed at educating the public about book ban efforts, and opposing current and future legislation related to it.
Burgard said there are "indications that these well-organized efforts are also going to start challenging material in public libraries as well as challenging libraries in institutions of higher education."
In December 2021, the Texas Tribune reported that book ban efforts in Texas schools started spreading to public libraries in Llano County, Victoria, Irving and Tyler.
"We haven’t really seen in San Antonio any real uptick or increase to challenges in our materials," said Dale McNeill, Assistant Director for Public Services with the San Antonio Public Library (SAPL).
In September 2021 SAPL hosted Banned Books Week, an annual celebration celebration of the freedom to read.
"The library is really about your freedom to read, even when people have challenged these books, we still generally make them available," McNeill said.
Librotraficante is a Texas based organization working to protect access to literature centered around historically marginalized communities. The group formed nearly ten years ago after the state of Arizona banned Mexican American studies. That ruling has since been overturned.
"We organized a bus, we loaded it up with the books that were banned and we did a six city tour from Houston all the way to Tucson, Arizona," said Librotraficante co-founder, Tony Diaz.
Diaz said Librotraficante is a movement that would like to make itself obsolete, but they are marking the ten year anniversary with another caravan across Texas.
"We're gonna be hitting all parts of Texas, not just in person, but also online through multimedia platforms," he said. "We also started underground libraries ten years ago, we’ll be revisiting those, restocking their banned books, adding the new banned books in there."