Quitting the United Nations Human Rights commission. Reinstating the death penalty. Encouraging the use of privately operated prisons. Ever since returning to the oval office, President Donald Trump has loosed a relentless hail-fall of executive orders — 93 of which have been signed since January 20.
On March 14, under the rubric of “reduction in the elements of the federal bureaucracy”, he came for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), directing its elimination “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
Composed of the Office of Library Services (OLS) and the Office of Museum Services (OMS), a more inoffensive entity can hardly be imagined.
Out of last year’s $6.8 trillion federal budget, the IMLS received a timid one three-thousandth of one percent of the entire federal budget — $294.8 million for grants, research and policy development in support of museums and libraries in every state of the nation.
Because the IMLS is funded by taxpayer dollars and it’s the congress who holds the power of the purse, statutorily speaking it’s unclear just how much latitude the president actually enjoys in ordering the entities dismantled. But still, librarians worry.
Last year, the OLS allocated $8.125 million for the support of the 7,000 libraries in New York state.
“This particular issue is not really about funding at the local level,” said Margie Menard, director of the Kingston Library, who noted that the budgets of libraries are raised locally through tax levies.
Last year, residents in Saugerties and Woodstock voted for budgets of $775,258 and $727,698.28 for their libraries respectively. In Kingston, residents voted for a library budget of $1,161,460.
“It’s really about the support services that we receive from the State Library, the Division of Library Development and the Mid-Hudson Library System, the entities that are federally funded,” said Menard. “If their capacity to provide the services that they provide now is eliminated, then we at the local level are sort of left twisting in the wind.”
The Mid-Hudson Library system is a consortium of 66 lending libraries spread out through Columbia, Duchess, Greene, Putnam and Ulster counties, with a combined library of over two million items available for loan. A searchable computer system links the databases of individual libraries and a courier operation drives items back and forth as needed. Called a co-operative public library system, the libraries pool resources. Operating their own courier service saves the libraries an estimated $4.5 million a year in USPS postage.
“If I can’t pay the bills for the courier or for ILS, our software vendor,” says director of the Mid-Hudson Library System, Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, “we start to see some major problems. The federal money is what pays for the staff at the state level that administers all the state aid programs that we do benefit from. Without that staff in between us and the state, that money just sits up there at the state.”
From choices ostensibly made out of a desire to see bureaucracy reduced, Aldrich predicts that inefficiency will be increased. Menard agrees.
“You might say, why do we need a federal Department of Museum and Library Services? Why do we need a state library, a library system and a local library? Well, there are cost savings associated. One of the things that the Museum and Library Services does is conduct research and data gathering and provide that information to local libraries so that we can make evidence-based decisions. We don’t have the capacity to do that. If we did, we would have to hire consultants and we would have to hire more staff and even then it probably wouldn’t be done as well because we don’t have the expertise that they have at the upper federal level.”
Another program administered is the construction grants for libraries.
“As you can imagine, a lot of libraries sort of evolved instead of being instituted,” said Jennifer Russell, director of the Library in Saugerties. “Even in Saugerties, the library was a brainchild of a handful of people and it started in this person’s house or in that storefront and then it moved to the Elks Lodge — you know, all this stuff — until it gets into an actual building which is kind of what happened here. They actually got a Carnegie building, but it wasn’t ADA compliant. If you come to the Saugerties library, you can see the original steps and no one with any disability or any injury could possibly have gotten into the library. So a lot of those construction aid grants are helping convert even old buildings like Kingston Library.”
In September of 2022, voters in Kingston signed off on a $14 million, 25-year bond to pay for renovations to the red brick building which has housed their library since 1978. Updates to HVAC, electrical, plumbing, as well as the installation of a new elevator.
“Over my tenure with Kingston Library, which is about 20 years now,” Menard says, “we’ve probably received in the neighborhood of a million dollars from these construction grants. We’ve benefited tremendously. And that’s a cost that is not then falling back to our local taxpayers.”
Russell can’t help but suspect that the cuts aren’t just politically-motivated, virtue signaling to the ideologically faithful.
“If you read the statements that they put on the website — the third sentence — ‘we will ensure we preserve our country’s core values and restore focus on patriotism’, the fact that they need to say it at all is weird. It should be a given. That’s the part that gives me the shivers.”
Benjamin Franklin, uber-patriot and godfather of lending libraries in the United States felt that providing access to information was a patriotic service. He observed in his biography that “libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans” and “made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries.”
The most positive spin Russell can attach to the thinking behind the cuts is that it could represent the deficiencies of a purely analytical mind. She suggests that books themselves can teach empathy to those possibly lacking.
“You know, Aesop fables are ancient stories. They were even shared orally before they were written down. I think they give very simple lessons in empathy. It’s a good start.”
The Frogs Who Wished for a King is a classic of the genre.
Whether or not reactionary ideology plays any part in the suppression of libraries, Aldrich doesn’t blame Republicans.
“A lot of people say, oh, you must have trouble with Republicans. Well, actually we don’t. In my 27 years of working with elected officials — particularly at the local, county, and state level — we’ve experienced bipartisan support. Everyone is supportive of libraries.”
Likewise, if political party identification should be irrelevant wherever the urge to ban books arises — or the urge to burn them — motivation is not.
“The folks who are looking to restrict access to books,” observes Menard, “are never the good guys.”
And yet for a banned book, in the market here or abroad, increased sales have typically been the result of calling attention to the very thing one hopes to suppress.
“So of course, something like Drag Time Story Hour gets attention. Some people find it controversial,” said Woodstock Director Ivy Gocker. “But what doesn’t get attention is people coming to senior meetups. There’s a lot of things happening all the time that everybody can feel good about.”
With all programs residents have come to appreciate, director Gocker, offers her advice.
“We just encourage people, if you have feelings or opinions about what is happening on the state and federal level, in terms of funding, get in touch with your legislators and let them know. That’s where we can try to be effective as a population.”
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