I built banned-books.org out of curiosity at first. But along the way I also developed a growing sense that the conversation around access to knowledge is shifting. Not always in obvious ways, but through smaller, seemingly reasonable decisions that, over time, shape what people are able to read, learn and question.
Patterns that are hard to see when you look at individual cases become visible once you bring them together.
Making those patterns visible created a starting point — a way to open up something that otherwise unfolds in a scattered and unnoticed way. The project has an international scope, with particular attention to regions where this kind of shift often stays out of view.
I also wrote about how the project came about and what emerged: I built a database of banned books — what emerged was a pattern.