Beyond Banned Books Displays: How Did Your Library Celebrate Intellectual Freedom Earlier This Month?

I am on the Illinois Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee and I just created a survey for IL Libraries asking them to share any creative ideas for rising above the basic "Banned Books Week" display that they tried out earlier this month.

During the ILA Annual Conference, our committee had a great program on "soft censorship," and at the end, we asked for feedback as to what else the ILA community wanted us to work on int he coming year. This topic-- how to promote Intellectual Freedom beyond just talking about book banning or putting up banned books displays-- came up many times.

We all know that book banning gets people's attention but the issue is so much deeper. In fact, because Intellectual Freedom in general is in jeopardy, it is important for us to pivot and focus on advocacy and information about our rights over just putting up displays of books that have been banned.

This is something Kelly Jensen writes about all of the time for Book Riot here, but before Banned Books Week 2025, she went into more detail about how she was helping her local bookstore focus on advocacy over banning. I shared her thoughts and bookmarks here.

It is this kind of "beyond banned books displays" idea that we are looking to gather for a program here in IL, but I also want to gather even more examples, from all over the country to share with my followers all over the world here on the blog.

So, if you had a successful display, campaign, promotion, etc.... during Banned Books Week that you want to share with a larger audience, please contact me (bspratford at hotmail dot com) with the subject heading, "Beyond Banned Books Displays" (to make sure it doesn't get lost in spam) and I will work to feature some of your Intellectual Freedom advocacy ideas here. I might even pass your library's work on to Kelly Jensen to feature on Book Riot as well.

You did the work to educate your community, but here is your chance to help libraries and their patrons all over the country. Please share. No library is too small. I want to hear about all of it.

Let's work together to share ideas. Our Intellectual Freedom could hang in the balance. Thanks in advance.