New campaign urges Michiganders to protect their right to read and oppose book banning efforts

LANSING, Mich. – With the rise of book banning and censorship efforts in libraries around the country, the Michigan Library Association (MLA) is launching a six-month MI Right to Read campaign, encouraging residents to oppose censorship and book banning efforts and protect their First Amendment right to read whatever they choose to at public libraries.

Public libraries are being targeted at an alarming rate by individuals and extremist groups to remove books that discuss topics such as racism, sexuality, gender, and history – censoring different perspectives.

Note From Debbie

May 30, 2024

Since I began my work with MLA 5 years ago, MLA has been intentional about our future, to move the needle, to look outward at other industries, and to bring a fresh, new perspective to our collective impact. The world is changing quickly and we must stay current on trends and innovations, and explore unfamiliar/atypical partnerships that will keep libraries at the forefront of our communities.  

It is now time to begin a process to query our key stakeholders, ask hard questions that require deep thought, and develop a new three-year plan that will begin in 2025. This work will evaluate the impact of our past and present performance, services, and programming as well as examine our future work together. This is not a refresh of our past plan, which has served us well for the past five years, but a newly engaged process that will allow all of our members to become involved in creating the planning document. This new three-year strategic plan will serve as a road map for MLA; it will carefully lay out how we execute our chosen strategy to achieve our mission. This plan will focus our energy, resources, and time and include concrete, realistic, and measurable goals as well as benchmarks and timelines.