Digital Library
Worldwide, populist governments are intensifying efforts to control what we’re permitted to read. But rather remarkably – historians, librarians, and ordinary readers are pushing back against draconian censorship. They do it quietly and with a deep sense of historical responsibility.
In 2025, 92% of all attempts to censor library materials in the U.S, were initiated by organised lobby groups and government officials – up from just 35% in 2023. A record 5,668 titles were banned. In Russia, books like Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ were dramatically raided from shelves, with publishers facing colossal fines for anything that referenced war, LGBTQ+ life, or dissent. The precedent is not lost on anyone who paid attention in history class. Books burned in 1930s Germany. Manuscripts hand-copied and passed in secret under Soviet-era repression, a tradition called samizdat.
We’re witnessing organisations like the Authors Guild, PEN America, and a coalition of academics-turned-activists working overtime to counteract the bans. People are not just defending books from removal, they are digitising them, and in some cases, pirating them.
That last word deserves nuance. Piracy carries real legal repercussions – a problem long familiar to the film industry, where ownership is fairly cut-and-dry. However, books are murkier, and pose unique challenges. Samizdat inspired a generation of digital shadow libraries, including LibGen, built ironically by Russians determined to see knowledge outlast any regime. Sci-Hub, launched in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, was created to bypass costly journal paywalls. Publishers who viewed her actions as theft, filed for damages. She remains in hiding, but has since launched Sci-Bot, an AI research-assistant drawing on that vast archive, impressively capable of answering complex scientific questions. Many of these pirate sites are cloned on decentralised servers, regularly changing domain-names to stay one-step-ahead of their opponents.
The criminality of these platforms becomes subjective, when corporations from the other side, viciously gate-keep the latest research breakthroughs on cancer and other diseases.
These digital efforts have become vital, but nothing replaces the warmth of your local library. Here in New Zealand, LIANZA has launched a Library Challenges Register to monitor and document attempts to remove or disrupt collections, recognising that the undue stress placed on library workers, shouldn’t be trivialised.
Support your librarians. Borrow widely. Preserve what you can. We owe it to everyone who ever risked something to make sure a story survived – including a brave little girl named Anne Frank, whose words, we are still free to read today.
