October 2, 2025, 1:06pm
This #BannedBookWeek, now we have loads to lament. Although some e-book bans have been stalled or swatted down within the courts, stealthy removal campaigns continue. At house and abroad.
However as Haylee May of CPR News first reported, a minimum of the nice folks of Colorado could have free speech to have fun. Because of the directors at Anythink public library, Coloradans will quickly have entry to an entire digital library of banned books. Freed from cost.
Anythink serves Coloradans in Adams County. The library has seven bodily branches in Bennett, Brighton, Commerce Metropolis, Thornton and the Perl Mack neighborhood of Denver, along with a sturdy digital program.
Starting this nationwide #BannedBooksWeek, that digital program will play host to “roughly 300 banned and challenged titles and paperwork,” which anybody within the state can entry at no cost.
This Freedom to Learn assortment goes by the logistical grace of The Palace Project, a free app that serves readers throughout the nation. Even these with out library playing cards.
Developed in partnership with the Digital Public Library of America, The Palace Venture helps public libraries from Connecticut to California “of their mission to supply equitable entry to digital content material.” The app collects minimal consumer knowledge, and lets readers take pleasure in a whole bunch of e-books. Once more, free, free, free.
As Lauren Penington of The Denver Post reported this May, it’s been a cool time for libraries and e-book licenses. (To bracket, for a second, the e-book bans which have made all this hustling mandatory within the first place.)
Although e- and audiobooks are a lot simpler to disseminate and proceed to develop in recognition, they’re a tough useful resource for libraries to take care of. That’s as a result of libraries often pay “greater than $65 for a two-year license on an e-book,” the place the common American would pay $12.99.
E-audiobooks are even worse. They’ll run a library as much as $100. Which is a a lot larger funding price than a print e-book, which tends to go for lower than an Andrew Jackson “and might be loaned out till it falls aside.”
Because of a groundbreaking agreement last summer, Anythink and its Rocky Mountain friends can now get round these prohibitive licensing prices. This implies extra books for extra folks, and a simpler slide previous the many forces—legal or not—that continue to hunt “objectionable” books out of public space.
As Anythink government director Mark Fink instructed CPR, the Freedom to Learn assortment will have a tendency a large secure. From “highly effective literary works…like 1984, The Bluest Eye, Where the Crawdads Sing, To Kill a Mockingbird, [and] Wicked,” to nonfiction like “Just Mercy, White Fragility, and A Queer History of the United States.” What unites all these titles is the very fact they’ve been challenged by courts in Colorado or across the nation.
Good searching, Anythink. To everybody out of Colorado: Banned Books Week will run from October 5-11 this yr. We hope you learn one thing troubling, to have fun.
