Friday, May 16, 2025
The White House issued an executive order to reduce several government entities, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services on March 14. The dismantling of the IMLS puts New York state at risk of losing $19 million in funding.
The IMLS is a federal agency established in 1996 by Congress’s passage of the Museum and Library Services Act. With a mission to advance, support, and empower America’s museums and libraries, the IMLS serves as a primary source for grants, policy development and research.
“IMLS provides the scaffolding that enables local libraries to be creative, innovative, and to shine in their communities,” said Caroline Ashby, the Nassau County Library System director. “Services provided by IMLS are things like research and data collection from libraries across the country, which enable library systems and local libraries to benchmark key performance indicators, overtime, against peer libraries. There’s no other source for libraries to get information like that.”
“By cutting off federal support from libraries, the Trump administration is cutting off opportunity for the American people — economically, culturally, professionally, and socially,” American Library Association President Cindy Hohl wrote in a statement on ALA’s social media.
On March 20, the ALA sent a letter to the new acting director of the IMLS Keith Sonderling, advising him to not cut library programs and abide by statutory obligations of the IMLS as determined by Congress. The administration placed roughly 80 percent of IMLS staff on administrative leave earlier this month, according to PBS.
There are concerns that grants and funding that support libraries nationwide is at risk. According to the ALA, libraries in California, Connecticut and Washington have received written notification that their IMLS grants were cancelled.
“$8.1 million in grants to states funding goes from the IMLS to the New York State library every year,” explained Ashby. “That accounts for 80% of the New York State library budget. Every local library in New York benefits from the work that’s being done at the state library.”
The elimination of the IMLS is a concern, as this will not only affect federal funding, but the effective distribution of state and grant funding. Loss of funding for the state library could challenge the organizations ability to provide legal, technical and governmental support for libraries, access to state construction funding, as well as the charters that libraries need to function.
“The IMLS invests hundreds of millions of dollars each year to help libraries across the Island, the state, and the country, develop literacy programs, workforce training, makes digital resources available, preserves our cultural heritage, and all kinds of civic engagement initiatives,” said Kevin Verbesey, the Executive Director of the Suffolk Cooperative Library System. “So this isn’t just budget trimming, it’s basically dismantling these important community infrastructure and services.”
The Nassau Library System provides multiple services to libraries throughout the county that are supported by funding from the state level, including the county wide online catalog, broadband internet service, and the inter-library delivery system. “The services that are provided trickle down to local libraries so they can really focus on the communities they serve,” said Ashby.
“A lot of times the grants we get from the state and the county is for repair work on our buildings,” said Camina Raphael-Lubin, director of the Lakeview Public Library. “So what happens is because we can no longer apply for these grants, it's harder to fix our buildings. Because if you don't have the capital funds for that, you can't do it or you have to sacrifice some services to make sure the repairs on your building are done.”
She encourages resident’s concerned about their local libraries call their local representatives and ask them to support the IMLS and stop the funding cuts.
