In ALA’s State of America’s Libraries report, released in April, the organization reported 821 attempts to censor materials and services at libraries, schools, and universities in 2024, with 2,452 unique titles challenged or banned. These numbers are drastically lower than the year before, but still the third highest number of book challenges since tracking began in 1990.

The numbers “demonstrate that there is still an enormous threat to everyone's freedom to read here in the United States, especially for users of libraries and students,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “The numbers are still historically high. They still outstrip anything that preceded this organized effort that we saw begin in 2020. We're still seeing the same patterns: One challenge is to multiple titles, demanding the removal of sometimes dozens of books all at once. These represent data points that are still alarming and that demonstrate that the efforts to sanitize library shelves is not over, and that we must continue to stand together to fight these efforts to remove books from libraries.”

Those tracking it on the ground in some of the states seeing the most censorship attempts have not seen a decrease.

“Our experience in Texas has been sort of the opposite,” says Frank Strong, co-director of the Texas Freedom to Read Project. “We are not seeing a decrease in efforts to censor books or to limit what, especially young people, can read in schools or public libraries. We're actually seeing things ramping up. I think that, if anything, censorship has become sort of more ingrained in our political culture, more reflexive, and as a result, it might be less visible, or it might be harder to track. And I think that might be what those numbers reflect.”

Every year, there is a caveat that the numbers—based on reports to ALA and media reports—are an undercount of actual book bans and censorship attempts. In its report, ALA cited three reasons its reported numbers could be lower than 2023.

Underreporting – Many book challenges are not publicly reported or covered by the press; therefore, ALA’s year-end data only represents a snapshot of censorship in America.

Censorship by Exclusion – This occurs when library workers are prohibited from purchasing books, or required to place books in restricted or less accessible areas of the library due to fear of controversy.

Legislative restrictions – Several states have passed laws restricting the type of materials available in libraries and schools based on the ideas or topics addressed in the materials.

“I want to emphasize that those are not minor caveats [with] marginal effects,” says Strong. “Those are dramatic shifts in the ways that people are approaching the books that they can have in schools.”

In 2021 and early 2022, Strong says, small groups of people be they parents or activists, would bring a list of five or 10 books to a school board meeting and demand they be removed. But now that is not enough.

“You have 100 books, you know, 400 books, you have 700 books that need to be removed,” Strong says. “It's far too many for an individual challenge. [It’s] we need to revamp the entire school district policy, or we need to take this energy to the state legislature and find a way to force every district in the state to remove books wholesale.”

Pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members and administrators initiated 72% of demands to censor books in school and public libraries, according to ALA’s report which said students’ parents only accounted for 16 percent of demands to censor books, while five percent of challenges were brought by individual library users.

As difficult as it is to know the true numbers of books being taken off the shelves, it’s even harder to quantify the impact these censorship efforts are having on the future of school and public library collections and access to books.

“That is really frightening to me,” says Strong. “There are certain districts in Texas that are becoming book deserts, where students are less and less likely to encounter a wide range of literature. And we see that in a lot of different ways--books being removed, book purchases drying up. I think that's a danger, and I do think that it's something that could take a long time to recover. I also worry about secondary effects like if the schools in the state of Texas are buying fewer books that tackle certain topics, publishers are going to be less likely to to pay for those books from authors, and less likely to publish those books. It's really hard to track the damage that this movement is doing, but I do think it's going to be long lasting.”

Caldwell-Stone is worried about more than the collections.

“I'm concerned about creating an environment where book banning is accepted, where there is no respect for civil liberties, especially [for] young people,” she said.

That would create a situation, she says, where young people have no agency to exercise decisions about what they read and instead could only read what they are told to read.

“I think that sets up a future where we're not creating those lifelong readers who support libraries,” she says. “I'm concerned that we're impoverishing thoughts and ideas for future generations.”