Students want new books. Thanks to restrictions, librarians can’t buy them.

WASHINGTON POST – In one Texas school district, school librarians have ordered 6,000 fewer books this year than the year before, because under a new rule parents must have 30 days to review the titles before the school board votes to approve them. In Pennsylvania, a school librarian who must now obtain her principal’s okay for acquisitions has bought just 100 books this school year, compared with her typical 600.

After spending roughly six months reviewing the school library catalogues of 6,600 districts across the country, a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University Wheelock College of Education, Kristen Slungaard Mumma discovered that school libraries in states with laws circumscribing instruction on race and LGBTQ issues are less likely to stock books addressing those topics. And she found that librarians in school districts that witness book challenges are less likely to order titles featuring LGBTQ characters.