5th September 2025
Feature
Library bodies wrangle censorship question but warn of deeper issues
CILIP has launched a committee to 'counter disturbing effects of censorship' but CEO Louis Coiffait-Gunn says that, while there is 'worry', there is more to the story. Lauren Brown reports
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n August, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) launched the Intellectual Freedom Committee to help library professionals “counter the disturbing
effects of censorship”. The group is headed up by Dr David McMenemy, reader in the School of Humanities in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow and the current CILIP Scotland president. “I firmly believe that this new committee
needs to see and understand the challenges to intellectual freedom in their full complexity,” McMenemy says. “It can then reinforce our profession’s commitment to intellectual freedom as being at the heart of our contribution to society, before we then advocate to others about this fundamental right.” The committee launches against a fraught – predominantly US – backdrop, where legal
challenges have been brought against, for example, a Florida law that came into effect in 2023 and banned books that “describe sexual content” in school libraries. Books that were removed under the law reportedly included Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and titles by Julia Alvarez, John Green, Jodi Picoult and others. A federal judge recently ruled that the part of this law used to remove books was “overbroad and unconstitutional” in what was heralded as a “sweeping victory for the right to read”, but “worry” still remains, says CILIP chief executive officer Louis Coiffait-Gunn. “There’s a lot of worry, partly because of the
rhetoric in the States, partly because of the anecdotal stuff,” he says. UK Reform-led Kent Libraries made headlines in July after claiming that transgender-related books had been removed from children’s sections of its libraries. (It turned out, Coiffait-Gunn says, “that was a pack of cards. The book wasn’t in the children’s section, it was in an adult section”.) Elsewhere, the National Library of Scotland
recently came under fire after it excluded a “gender-critical” book from an exhibition about books that have “helped to shape our country”. CILIP Scotland released a statement that, in part, said: “We understand that the book in question has not been banned and is perma- nently available to read for free within the library, as well as being included within the
Library Focus
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