Shoutout to the librarian who showed me how to find banned books for free

Last week I was at the public library in Portland asking about a book that got banned in my kid's school district. The librarian just smiled and walked me to the interlibrary loan system, showed me how to request it from three counties over. She said they get like 50 requests a month for stuff that's technically restricted in local schools. Has anyone else used ILL to grab banned titles their library doesn't stock on the shelves?

2 comments

2 Comments

rodriguez.jordan2d ago

Did the exact same thing at my local library in Austin last month. They had a whole cheat sheet taped under the front desk for requesting challenged books through ILL, no questions asked. The librarian told me they process over a hundred of those requests every month and half the time they just buy a copy for the permanent collection if enough people ask.

burns.ruby2d ago

Hell yeah, that's exactly how it should work! I did the same thing at our library in the suburbs last fall after they pulled a couple of books from the young adult section. The lady at the front desk didn't even blink when I asked about one of them, she just opened a drawer and handed me a preprinted form for requesting banned titles through their system. She told me they've got a whole filing cabinet full of those forms because so many people ask for the same books. It's wild how librarians are basically running underground railroads for books right now, and they're not shy about it either. Gotta love that they're fighting back in such a simple, quiet way.