The main Amsterdam public library is this month hosting an exhibition of several hundred books banned from American public and school libraries as a warning of what could happen here, the organisers said.

Index Americana is the second exhibition mounted by the Ongelezen Boekenclub (the unread books club), a group of artists whose aim is to revive books that are no longer read. The first show featured books that were never taken out of the library; their second is about books that cannot be taken out because they have fallen victim to censorship.

This year alone, some 2,500 books have been removed from American libraries, including Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the eerily likely story of a totalitarian state based on the suppression of women, and All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, about a gay black boy growing up in New Jersey and Virginia.

According to Bas Jacobs, who is one of the organisers, the exhibition is relevant for the Netherlands as well. “From the 1970s onward, what happens in the United States, has been happening in Europe a couple of years later,” he told the Parool.

“In the US, censoring library books started with the actions of a few worried parents. That developed into organised groups. In the Netherlands certain individuals are also clamouring to have titles removed. The logical next step is that they will organise themselves too to gain impact,” he said.

One such organsation is the ultra conservative catholic Civitas Christiana, which orchestrated various smear campaigns against writer Pim Lammers who wrote a book about the relationship between a child and his football trainer, and also sought to ban the school sex education programme Lentekriebels.

Jacobs said he hopes the exhibition will raise awareness about these developments. “We need a discussion about whether we will follow in the footsteps of the United States or strengthen our institutions so we can prevent censorship from happening here,” he said.

The books in the banned books exhibition can be taken out on request. “On the one hand, we want all books to be available and on the other we want people to experience what it is like to want a book and be unable to get it,” Jacobs said. “In the end, we decided not to take a leaf out of America’s book.”

Index Americana is on at the OBA Oosterdok in Amsterdam until September 30. Entrance is free. More info about the exhibition and the Ongelezen Boekenclub here.