How to Check Your Sources: Book Censorship News, September 25, 2026

Below in the roundup, this was the text: Check Your Shelf Sign up to receive Check Your Shelf, the Librarian’s One-Stop Shop For News, Book Lists, And More. The outlet that shared this headline, link, and explanation of the link doesn’t matter too much. This isn’t about shaming them. Their work is good and relied upon by professionals nationwide. Instead, this example serves as a prime opportunity to talk about why doing the work of sharing book censorship news is so difficult and why it is that national organizations that track book censorship, including PEN America and the American Library Association, cannot have accurate counts, no matter how hard and well-done their work is. Good outlets can still make mistakes when it comes to sourcing information because we’re swimming in a mis- and dis- information ecosystem. Stepping back to do a deep dive takes time and sometimes additional background knowledge that not everyone has or knows to look for. This summer, I talked about the work that goes into tracking book censorship and sharing the links every week in Literary Activism. It’s not as easy as a tracked Google search. In fact, I don’t track any keywords at all. I keep a list of ...