The Digital Public Library of America has launched a new program that provides users with free access to books that are banned in their area.

The program, called The Banned Book Club, provides readers with free access to books pulled from shelves of their local libraries. The e-books will be available to readers via the Palace e-reader app.

“At DPLA, our mission is to ensure access to knowledge for all and we believe in the power of technology to further that access,” said John S. Bracken, executive director of Digital Public Library of America, in a news release.

“Today book bans are one of the greatest threats to our freedom, and we have created The Banned Book Club to leverage the dual powers of libraries and digital technology to ensure that every American can access the books they want to read,” he said.

According to the news release, the DPLA uses GPS-based geo-targeting to establish virtual libraries in communities across the country where books have been banned.

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Banned books in your area

Readers can visit TheBannedBookClub.info to see the books that have been banned in their area. You may be asked to share your location with the website.

How to read banned books

You can access the Banned Book Club now by downloading the Palace app. Once you've downloaded the app, choose "Banned Book Club" as your library, then follow the prompts to sign up for a free virtual library card.

More specific instructions are available here.

Obama promotes Banned Book Club

Following the announcement of the launch, former President Barack Obama voiced his support for the program on Twitter.

1,200 requests to censor library books in 2022: ALA

The program launches at a time when the number of demands to censor library books is at a record-high.

According to a report from the American Library Association, there were over 1,200 demands to censor library books in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since they began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago.

The number nearly doubled from the previous year.

“A book challenge is a demand to remove a book from a library’s collection so that no one else can read it. Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing these challenges come from organized censorship groups that target local library board meetings to demand removal of a long list of books they share on social media,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, in a news release earlier this year.

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“Their aim is to suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation’s conversations, such as people in the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color," she said in the release.

Caldwell-Stone went on to say that the choice of what to read should be left to the reader, or, in the case of children, to parents, and that the choice does not belong to "self-appointed book police."