In the aftermath of the Trump administration’s executive order attempting to eliminate the IMLS, and as librarians across the country receive notices cancelling their IMLS grant funding, IMLS Matters is collecting testimony from librarians about the impact of the IMLS’s work. Here are some of their stories.
Post a comment
How to make sense of the Trump administration’s attack on the Institute of Museum and Library Services?
Nouns are helpful. Who is being attacked? Librarians, everyday citizens, and the civil servants who support them are being attacked. Verbs are helpful. The ability to access information and make sense of the world is being attacked. Adjectives complete the picture. Attacks are repeated in an attempt to leave us traumatized and too overwhelmed to resist.
The attack on IMLS is rationalized, in part, as an attempt to re-center a particular form of American Exceptionalism. This way of understanding the United States and our place in the world has a dark track record. It is unsurprising that one of the first casualties of the attack on IMLS has been tribal libraries.
The zone has been flooded. Cast to sea, we paddle on. Land inevitably emerges, and our keel strikes the shore. We disembark and move forward—perhaps on shaky legs—yet resolutely committed to our core values.
We fight. As we have fought before.
On April 1, I created IMLS Matters. It is a place for people to share stories of how IMLS matters to them. In a short period of time people have shared stories from across the country—more than 20 different states represented so far.
Stories are powerful. They are one of the oldest technologies we use to achieve solidarity. Solidarity is fundamental to individual and collective action.
Here are some of the stories people have shared with IMLS Matters:
IMLS is the reason I have a career in libraries. I joined a project funded by IMLS as a graduate student worker—the Religion in North Carolina Digital Collections—in 2012. This project was led by Duke Divinity School Library and had UNC Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University as collaborative partners. When I graduated, the project coordinator position was open for the final year of the grant, and this was my first step into what became a decade of working in libraries.
What sticks with me most, however, is the impact that this government funding had on the people we served. This project worked to bring collections that were being stored in people's attics, basements, and back rooms to new audiences. Yes, it focused on digitizing many of the (scarce, not-digitally available) small-time newsletters, bulletins, church directories, and synagogue cookbooks in the collections of these universities, but the crucial, good thing that this project accomplished was to bring federal funding to small religious communities whose materials the universities had not historically deemed interesting or worthy of collecting; it forged new relationships, and allowed myself and others on the project to act as a bridge for preserving scarce materials that might otherwise have been lost to disaster.
Frankly, some of the collections we digitized came from communities in western North Carolina; I don't know what has become of the originals in the wake of the horrific flooding and mudslides of 2024. Human lives are paramount; but history and culture are vital to human life, and also worth preserving. I owe a great deal to IMLS, personally and professionally, as do many communities in NC and beyond. I'm forever grateful for the opportunities they provided to students, communities, and heritage.
— Beth DeBold (North Carolina)
I received a full scholarship to earn my master's in information sciences from the University of Tennessee Knoxville that was funded through IMLS. At the time, I was a one-person-show library director in rural West Virginia. After I graduated, I went on to work as a prison librarian in WV and Maryland. Without the scholarship funds I never would have pursued higher education. I am so very grateful to IMLS for their care, their work, and their commitment to libraries, library workers, museums, and museum workers.
— Mary Rayme (West Virginia and Maryland)
IMLS has shaped every stage of my career. It helped me be able to afford graduate school through an assistantship with the Archival Training Collaborative, which provided essential training to paraprofessionals working in archives across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. It later supported the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) National Digital Stewardship Residency and Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowships, which I had the honor of managing and directing, creating pathways into the field for emerging professionals. IMLS also funded the Autistic Voices Oral History Project, a dream I had after my late-in-life autism diagnosis. That project created paid opportunities for 24 mostly Autistic memory workers and community members to preserve the history of the Autistic community from within. Through its grant programs, IMLS has transformed lives and made space for futures that didn’t always seem possible.
— Casey E. Ovela Davis (Tennessee)
Kentucky receives $2.7 million in [Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA)] funds each year to support our state library and to provide subawards to public libraries. Approximately 12 library development employees’ wages are partially paid through LSTA funds. Approximately $400,000 is provided to local libraries for continuing education, workforce development, literacy, and technology projects each year. Some of these projects have included attending a national conference that they would not otherwise afford, purchasing computers, purchasing books for an outreach vehicle, providing English language learning classes, and providing family literacy programs. The Department for Libraries and Archives provides the Kentucky Talking Book Program for the blind, providing audio and braille books to thousands of reading-challenged individuals. Participants receive materials regularly that helps ward off loneliness and isolation.
— Dena Ratliff Warren (Kentucky)
IMLS matters to me and my library community, a Title I school in Delaware. We depend on IMLS funding in Delaware because it allows us to be included in the statewide library catalog. That means that our students and teachers can access books from libraries across the entire state. This allows us to access eBooks from Hoopla and Libby, which IMLS also funds in Delaware. IMLS also funds the statewide courier delivery which allows those books to travel to and from every library in the state. This helps my students to read and learn about anything that their hearts desire—from books about volleyball and cooking and rocks and minerals to books about Sonic the Hedgehog and the Wizard of Oz. Access to every book in our state allows my students the opportunity to foster their love of reading and know no limits to what they can read about.
— Sara Thomas (Delaware)
Every year, the Maryland State Library Agency distributes nearly $2 million of Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funding provided through IMLS to Maryland public libraries. The MSLA Public Libraries and State Networking Branch (PLSNB) serves as grant liaison to public libraries that receive these LSTA funds. The Baltimore County Public Library has received significant funding through this process over the years. In the last funding cycle (ending in 2024), the BCPL system received support for its Long-Term Device Lending Library. This service provides continued support for much needed Internet access and Chromebook devices to patrons and citizens with demonstrated need. As a broadly diverse economic community, the citizens of Baltimore County have different resources to access computer and internet services. The technology gaps prevent people from accessing government services, job opportunities, health services, education, banking, or a variety of critical public services. This one program provides access to those that might not be able to afford access to the digital economy and the many parts of modern society that take place only online. This is but one critical service that is funded through the IMLS services and the congressionally mandated LSTA funding.
— Todd Carpenter (Maryland)
My first library job was at a regional state university in Louisiana. The first grant I ever received was the IMLS Connecting to Collections Bookshelf Grant—a 23-text set of conservation texts and resources designed to help small and medium-sized institutions handle every collections care contingency, from emergency preparedness to digitizing documents, from caring for living collections to training staff and volunteers. This seemingly small grant had a tremendous impact on my professional development and the care for that community’s archives and special collections.
— Joshua Finnell (New York)
IMLS is everywhere in libraries. It enables collections to be made available online through new and improved search and discovery systems. It offers support for thinking and doing (planning grants from IMLS are one of the best ideas ever). It helps smaller libraries get equipment and resources to digitize which means there is a chance that small town and rural America doesn’t lose its history as physical documents deteriorate. IMLS keeps libraries running. I always get tripped up on whether it is the Institute FOR Museum and Library Services or the Institute OF Museum and Library Services. It is OF because it is us—it is our libraries and our museums.
— Julie Hardesty (Indiana)
We received a grant after COVID that IMLS made possible, and we used that grant to put 85 years’ worth of old newspapers, from 1835–1920, online for people to read, search obits, and use to learn about local history and our community. These papers have received hundreds to thousands of uses every month since and make it possible for people to better connect with their ancestors.
— Melissa Widner (Indiana)
If IMLS matters to you I encourage you to share your story. Please consider taking further action by calling and writing to your representatives.
10.1146/katina-042225-1
