This is Banned Books Week, an annual event that in part draws attention to book censorship in libraries and schools.

The Lexington Public Library is participating in Banned Books Week and says centers censorship is not the way to handle material some may find objectionable.

Here, Banned Books Week is a promotion that is put on every year by the American Library Association that really highlights different books that have been challenged and for intellectual freedom.

So typically that means that someone has questioned whether that book has merit or belongs in a library collection.

They are most often related to gender or race or sexuality, sometimes related to religion, and very definitely directed towards people in the minority.

I can tell you, out of the top 13 most challenged books tracked last year across the American Library Association system.

I think ten of 13 of them were related to sexuality.

I think ultimately people challenge books because they are different from what they hold to be true.

It doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't true, but it's not.

It's different from their truth.

That's scary for some people.

Every library has a different system for how to challenge a book.

Ultimately, for a public library, it would be a board's decision and or executive management.

It is important to note here in Lexington that we do not ban any books for the most part.

Our community really loves to read, and it's just a question of finding the book that speaks to them.

But we have had some concerns.

There are always concerns.

Our whole philosophy is that parents absolutely have the choice of what they want their children to read.

But just because they don't want their child to read, that doesn't necessarily mean that somebody else doesn't want their child to read that.

So we encourage parents to come with their children to the library and select the books that align with your values.

Libraries typically have a very strong collection development policy, and what they've done with that is try to determine what interests the people in our community for a public library.

We look at our different demographics.

We look to see what are the bestsellers in different categories.

We really want to make sure that we have a popular collection that appeals to everybody in the community.

We really want to support intellectual freedom.

That's how we grow, build our creativity and think, think through things differently.

But not all of.