Free digital Long Beach Public Library cards will soon be available to teens across the nation in an effort to offset bookbanning in other parts of the country, thanks to a new partnership between Long Beach and the Brooklyn Public Library.
While book-banning attempts are rare in Long Beach, with the most recent challenge at the library failing in 2016, the practice is not uncommon. In 2024, the American Library Association recorded challenges to 2,452 different books across the country. The association said the majority of those challenges came from organized movements, many targeting sexual or LGBTQ+ content.
Books Unbanned, a program started by the Brooklyn Public Library in 2022, provides access to that library’s — as well as the Boston, LA County, San Diego and Seattle Public Libraries’ — online catalog to United States teens and young adults aged 13 to 21.
“We started Books Unbanned in April 2022, and we really did it in response to all the stories we were hearing about books being banned across the country. … We wanted to figure out a way to get books in the hands of young people who were being denied them,” said Fritzi Bodenheimer, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Public Library. “We just didn’t feel like, as a public library, we could just sit back and watch this happen.”
The Long Beach City Council voted on July 22 to join the program by authorizing the city manager to execute a license agreement and memorandum of understanding between the city of Long Beach and Brooklyn Public Library.
Long Beach library cards will be accessible to youth in the U.S. between 13 and 19 years old, and possibly 20- to 24-year-olds if the library feels it can support extra participants, Susan Jones, the library’s manager of automated services, said in an emailed statement. Participants will have to fill out an application and renew annually to gain and retain access to the card.
Books Unbanned participants will be able to check out items from Long Beach Public Library’s e-book and e-audiobook collection, which is housed on Libby, likely beginning in September or October 2025, in time for Banned Books Week. The campaign, which will run the second week of October, “aims to raise awareness about the rising number of book bans in schools and libraries and to advocate for the freedom to read,” Jones said. “So the tie-in with this program is a natural fit.”
Long Beach Public Library officials expect between 150 and 200 new users to join their Libby platform, adding to the 31,000 active Long Beach cardholders already using the site. To minimize the impact of this influx of users, the library plans to purchase additional e-books and e-audiobooks, paid for by an upcoming $100,000 fundraising campaign run by the Long Beach Public Library Foundation.
The Foundation has been fundraising since the beginning of 2025, said Veronica Garcia Dávalos, the Foundation’s executive director and CEO. She added that the Foundation has already received a pledge from a private donor who plans to match every donation up to $10,000.
Jones added that the library intends to purchase “titles that may be facing censorship challenges nationwide,” as well as “popular interest and high demand hold titles” to minimize wait times. The program’s start date will not be affected by the success of the fundraising push, according to a spokesperson for the Long Beach Public Library Foundation.
Bodenheimer, of the Brooklyn Public Library, said there’s a clear demand for libraries like Long Beach to step up and provide books that might otherwise be inaccessible.
“Since we launched in April of 2022, we’ve had about almost 10,000 young people sign up for a card, and they’re from all 50 states, and they’ve checked out … close to or maybe over 300,000 books,” Bodenheimer said. “It’s incredibly exciting and heartwarming, and it’s also incredibly heartbreaking because it means there’s a need.”