공공도서관, 아동 도서관으로 전락하나

This story was reported with support from the MuckRock foundation . Earlier this year, an Alaskan assembly member found himself in hot water for introducing a resolution that would have prohibited the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Public Library System from making books and other media available to anyone if deemed “harmful to minors” by the borough manager. The proposal wasn’t well received. Public records obtained from the Borough Clerk’s Office and shared with 404 Media show that the proposal was wildly unpopular. In emails to assembly members, constituents implored the resolution's sponsor Michael Bowles to withdraw it, calling it an “audacious and idiotic” attempt at destruction by way of “bureaucratic nightmare.” One constituent likened it to a proposal to “make all libraries children's libraries.” Another said its adoption could result in countless other books being removed that “are not sexual in nature” but which may contain “passing references to sex or adult themes.” A week went by before Bowles withdrew the request, seemingly to recalibrate. The Mat-Su Sentinel reported in May that the assembly member introduced and again withdrew a resolution that would have forced the system to pull the book Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human from shelves. This teen book has been in the adult section of Mat-Su’s borough-run libraries since 2023 when it was relocated from the teen section following a challenge. 404 Media has obtained records from dozens of public libraries, which include Requests for Reconsideration of Materials forms (RFRs) and official decision letters to challengers, along with draft versions of updated collection development policies. Much has been written in the last five years about the blatant efforts to suppress access to books that could contain any remotely challenging ideas or that deviate even slightly from cis white heterodoxy, but there’s been little talk about what that means from the rest of us. What my reporting confirms is that there are more books intended for children and young adults in adult sections because challengers didn’t believe it was appropriate for children and young adults to read about people of color and/or people who are queer, trans, or both, while also showing that a large-scale reorganization of public library collections is currently underway, that its application varies by state and locality, and that it’s been very hard to measure because it’s totally chaotic. Records obtained from one South Carolina public library system show that between June 2024 and August 2025, more than two dozen young adult books were relocated to the library’s adult section. Before that, the system had already resectioned more than two dozen other YA titles. The ACLU sued Greenville County Public Library System in 2025 for its board-adopted policies from 2024. Most letters from the library’s executive director didn’t include any reason for the relocation. However, more recent letters reference the library’s updated collection development policy. One frequently challenged title caught up in the mix at this library was The Hate U Give a YA book published in 2017 about a teenager who has to witness her friend—an unarmed Black man—be murdered by a police officer during a traffic stop. In 2024 at the Greenville County Public Library System, the book was challenged and retained before, in 2025, the book was again challenged and relocated to the library’s adult section. What happened in between these two events, the library’s board adopted policies making this and other books easier to remove. The majority of U.S. anti-library laws introduced from 2022 to now have largely focused on school libraries. Only a few states have laws that affect municipal and county public libraries, and so far, most of these efforts have either failed to pass or were struck down by governors. That’s not to say state governments haven’t found other ways to do censorship. As of now, at least two states have mechanisms tying public library funding to content restrictions. One of them happens to be South Carolina, which has a legislative requirement that threatens to strike the system from its budget unless the system certifies with the State Librarian that they don’t keep books in the children, youth or teen sections that could be of "prurient interest” to a 17 year old. A more aggressive version of state library-agency rulemaking comes from Alabama. In 2024, the Alabama Public Library Service (APLS) amended its administrative code to withhold funding to public libraries that don’t do enough to restrict minors’ access to “sexually explicit” or otherwise “inappropriate” material, and has only continued to broaden its scope since. APLS has since gone on to broaden the criteria for what is “sexually explicit” before adding a provision to treat content dealing with the “concept of more than two biological genders” as inappropriate for youth sections. Tuscaloosa Public Library released records to 404 Media in response to a public records request that included tracked edits to the library’s 2025 collection development policy—initially based on a 2022 version—to meet APLS funding requirements. These changes appear to have been accepted. A line about the library welcoming community feedback on collection development, which an editor appeared to question, was also retained. The motives behind these changes to collection policies and funding incentives raise serious questions about who public libraries are for in America. William Rodick, who researches representation and culturally responsive teaching in Pre-K and primary education for the nonprofit EdTrust, says the mass relocation of diverse books from developmentally appropriate sections of public libraries into adult sections is a form of “intellectual condescension,” or the idea that young people aren’t capable of dealing with hard topics through literature. “That becomes manifest by removing opportunities for demonstrating honesty for students,” Rodick told 404 Media. Rodick says that students already have disproportionate access to spaces outside of classrooms where students can access reading materials. Regardless of where they’re getting their books, students of color and students who are LGBTQ+ aren’t presented in the majority of the books they do have access to—much less so now than just a few years ago. “And when they are presented, quite often those representations are stereotypes through really negative portrayals that are certainly not going to use the kind of motivation students need to engage with reading,” Rodick said. “The fear that I have is that at some point, we are going to see even greater disparity in outcomes than we already do for literary rates because of perpetual inaccess to quality materials.” Literacy rates have been trending downward for young people for a while. When the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released its Nation’s Report Card assessment in early 2025, it caused a stir, because one of the major takeaways was that more than 60 percent of fourth graders don’t read proficiently . Another was that the gap between the country’s strongest and weakest readers is widening because the lows are getting lower. Meanwhile, in 2020, about half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 were found to have low literacy skills . Nadja Young is chief brand officer with MetaMetrics, the company that developed the widely-adopted Lexile Reading Framework because it measures both reader ability and text complexity to match readers with books that are appropriately challenging. She says the focus for upper grades in high school is really about vocabulary in contexts that are authentic. "Reading whole books absolutely helps to build that stamina," Young told 404 Media. Yet shrinking attention spans and fast-moving curricula are pushing schools toward teaching excerpts over whole books, to the point that college instructors observe that st