Skip to Main Content
Lansing Community College Library

Banned Books: Home

A research guide for use by students learning about banned books.

Welcome!

Banned Books is an interesting and lively topic! This guide is designed to help you learn more about the banning or censorship of intellectual materials. Below are several books you can find here at the LCC Library.

Why Books are Banned

Banned Books Week at LCC

 Be on the lookout for the display this fall! October 1st-7th 2023.

Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools. For more than 40 years, the annual event has brought together the entire book community — librarians, teachers, booksellers, publishers, writers, journalists, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular. Here at LCC, we celebrate this occasion by placing a banned books display.

Can we define "banned books"?

Britannica
book banning, the practice of prohibiting or restricting the reading of certain books by the general public or by members of a local community or religious group. Books can be banned by means of their removal from publicly accessible locations (e.g, libraries), by their destruction (including the burning of printed books), or by making their authorship or distribution a punishable act. Books are typically banned by governments, but they can also be effectively banned by religious authorities, businesses, and—in rare cases—powerful private individuals. https://www.britannica.com/topic/book-banning 
 
In the Oxford Dictionary of English we find these definitions:
" ban1 verb  officially or legally prohibit (something)..."
 
"challenge noun a call to prove or justify something: a challenge to the legality of the banning order."

The World Encyclopedia provides us with this definition:


"censorship   System whereby a government-appointed body or official claims the right to protect the public interest by influencing the release of any item of mass communication."

Links about Banned Books