This blog post is by Nicole P. Dyszlewski, Professor & Assistant Dean for Curricular Innovation, Roger Williams University School of Law.
Banned Books Week is Over. What Should We Do Now?
Celebrating and commemorating Banned Books Week 2026 was important. It was critical for libraries and library workers to take a week to highlight the realities of censorship. This work was done through social media posts, book displays, events, speaking engagements, local contests, book club selections, and an array of activities for all ages that allowed library workers, teachers, authors, friends, illustrators, volunteers, administrators, professors, students, and readers to call attention to books which have been challenged for being dangerous or inappropriate.
But Banned Books Week 2026 is now over.
And the work must continue.
This is the time where we should finish the final chapter of the banned book of our choice and immediately pick up our advocacy tools.
It Is Time to Demand the Freedom to Read.
While Banned Books Week is focused on the library, the Freedom to Read belongs to all of us. Advocating for Freedom to Read laws is the work of everyone: teachers, parents, lawyers, rabbis, publishers, scientists, teens, mental health workers, ministers, atheists, artists, booksellers, union workers, writers, and voters, to name a few. This work reaches beyond libraries into communities, classrooms, state houses, board meetings, towns, and senior centers. Library workers bring essential expertise, and readers and voters bring powerful voices of their own.
With that being said, it is also true that not every community member knows how to advocate for the Freedom to Read. We don’t always know the power we have as advocates until we start to speak up. But that power is there, and it is mighty. We discovered that power in Rhode Island. The smallest state has some very loud voices.
Advocates in Rhode Island Organized, Fought, and Won. You Can, Too.
In Rhode Island, a powerful group of advocates came together in coalition to encourage our legislators and governor to pass and sign into law the most protective Freedom to Read law in the United States (so far). And the most staggering part of this effort, many of us had never seen ourselves as advocates before.
It was not enough for us to pass the law, we also wanted to empower others to form their own coalitions in states near and far to work towards advocating for the Freedom to Read.
Encouraged and supported by the Law for Librarians (L4L) Intellectual Freedom Symposium and the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, leaders of the Rhode Island Freedom to Read Coalition wrote a white paper on our experiences. This was peer reviewed by an amazing array of scholars throughout the first half of 2026. Our utmost gratitude to our reviewers, commenters, and the powerhouses of Sarah Lamdan and Sue Silverman who organized the symposium.
Read Our Whitepaper. Use Our Victory to Plan Your Own.
Building a Freedom to Read Coalition: Lessons from Rhode Island’s Fight Against Book Bans was created to share what our coalition learned with others who are ready to demand the freedom to read. This toolkit provides complementary essays from a diversity of community members on how to advocate for the Freedom to Read and why this issue is important. I edited these essays with brief biographical information to allow readers to really get to know the authors.
The most important part of the white paper is the appendix. It shows the love and determination which went into the efforts by giving example documents and testimonies. It is especially robust because of the amazing work and contributions of the Rhode Island Authors Against Book Bans.
Please read this paper.
Please be inspired by the work of so many on a topic so dear to us.
Please read about our struggles and failures.
Please celebrate our wins and reflect with us on where we may have fallen short.
And please, please share this paper with a friend or a potential coalition partner. Please use it to start a conversation or bring it to a local advocacy group. We want readers and voters all over the country in states blue, red, and purple, to feel empowered to do this work in their own communities in their own ways.
