Bookshelves have become battlefields in recent years. Challenges to materials and calls for book bans have climbed to levels previously unheard of across the country as culture wars stoked by political differences have brought the fight into both school and public libraries.
Kentucky is no exception. Challenges to materials in the Bluegrass State tripled in 2022, but that brought the total to just 70, according to American Library Association statistics. Those numbers receded in 2023 before – according to the state Department of Libraries and Archives – exploding in 2024.
The annual Statistical Report of Kentucky Public Libraries, published in April, found that 302 challenges – referred to in the report as “Intellectual Freedom Incidents” – took place last year. That marks a 1,061.5% jump from 2023. The lion’s share of them, as reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader, originated in just two counties: Daviess and Bourbon.
“The greatest majority of Kentucky communities are very happy with the library services that their libraries provide and, even in the areas where they saw the uptick, it was either one family or small group making those challenges,” said Heather Dieffenbach, the current chair of the Kentucky Public Library Association and the executive director of the Lexington Public Library.
The ALA has found that more than 70% of all challenges to library materials originate from two areas: so-called “pressure groups” that try to influence public policy related to specific issues, and governmental entities that include elected officials.
In the case of the spike in challenges around Owensboro, local librarians tied many of the complaints to the Daviess County Citizens 4 Decency. The group has also, in recent years, testified to local government in efforts to stop drag performances from being put on in local venues and advocated generally for conservative Christian values.
Erin Waller, the director of the Daviess County Public Library system, said the group has challenged more than 250 titles in the library’s juvenile and young adult sections having to do with “issues of race, gender identity, sexuality, anatomy [and] science.” More recently, Waller said many of the challenges have come from one person specifically challenging books related to “gender identity and sexual identity.”
Despite the relative avalanche of challenges, Waller said “nothing has been removed” from the library’s stacks, though some have been reclassified from the young adult section to the adult area.
“There's been a couple of odds and ends,” she said. “There's been a couple of books over the past couple of years that we've moved from, let's say, the juvenile collection to the [young adult] collection, or from the [young adult] collection to the adult collection, but maybe three titles out of the now, close to 300 titles that have been challenged in the past two years.”
Waller said her library’s board, whose votes ultimately decide the fate of challenges, is “pretty split” at the moment. The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer reports that the time-consuming process of reviewing challenged materials reportedly cost the library more than $35,000, mostly for 300 hours in personnel costs.
“It has prevented us from being able to spend our time doing other things that would benefit the whole community, but we're following the policy as it's set,” she said. “We haven't found anything that doesn't fall within our collection development policy. This is just people's opinions … there's no legal precedent here that says that we need to do what [the people challenging the books] say.”
The Daviess County Public Library has made two small policy changes in the wake of this avalanche of challenges: relabeling its former teen section as “young adults” and implementing a new kind of library card that restricts teens – if parents choose – to books from the children’s section. Waller said not many families have expressed interest in their child obtaining this limited access card.
In Bourbon County, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports that a local family and some other community members have “protested 102 books over a roughly six-month period,” but that challenges have ceased in the wake of the Paris-Bourbon County Library declaring itself Kentucky’s first “sanctuary” library, or First Amendment library. This distinction – which shows the library’s formal commitment to defending the freedom of expression – was also supported by resolutions from the local fiscal court and city council.
“It's something that isn't really new to library history and, with each wave, we address it and we have conversations with our communities about the role of libraries and how libraries are places where people can explore new ideas and discover diverse perspectives.”Heather Dieffenbach, the current chair of the Kentucky Public Library Association
Dieffenbach said her library system in Lexington hasn’t had a materials challenge since 2023. She said that challenges to materials in libraries across the country tend to happen in waves. The KPLA chair compared recent years’ deluge of book ban attempts to those of the 1980s, which the ALA says shared common concerns over “critical teaching about race and racism” and objections to “teaching about gender roles, sexual orientation and alternative models of the family.”
“It's something that isn't really new to library history and, with each wave, we address it and we have conversations with our communities about the role of libraries and how libraries are places where people can explore new ideas and discover diverse perspectives,” Dieffenbach said. “Our job is not to buy books for one group. It's to buy materials to satisfy the curiosity and information seeking [wants] of everyone in our community.”
Waller said that letting individuals’ opinions, even those of a library director, determine what’s on local shelves would be a “slippery slope.”
“There's lots of things in this library that would personally offend me but, because of the education that I have and the time that I have spent working in libraries, none of that matters,” she said. “That's not our role to make those decisions.”
Dieffenbach said that libraries advocate for parents to help guide their children’s reading choices, but that making decisions for one’s family isn’t the same as making decisions for an institution.
“Libraries support that by offering tools like reading levels and book reviews [and] guidance from librarians,” Dieffenbach said. “We're always there ready to help you find the right book for your child and your family, but we can't do that by limiting the choices for all families.”
