National Emergency – The Dismantling of the Institute of Museum & Library Services

The dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the major federal funding agency for all libraries and museums in the US, has been going on for a week and a half now amid mild public outcry. Yesterday’s news that they finally put all IMLS staff on admin leave (probably because they can’t legally fire them all yet) is just the latest blow to the library world. The independent journalist Marisa Kabas has been following this story on social media and providing timely updates. She reports that the IMLS employees are sounding the alarm about this as they go into their offices and clear them out.

https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3llr5yw4tvk2t

I haven’t written about this so far mainly because I’m in such a state of despair that I have nothing particularly new or interesting to say about this except “Folks, this is real real bad”. Which is not really enough to base a whole blog post on. But today I thought I might provide a little insight into some of the things which are going to go away now that they’ve made an end-run around Congressional funding of the IMLS. These things are specific to Florida, and I’m going to provide an explainer, but Florida is hardly unique in this area, and many of the poorest and most rural regions of the country are going to be hit the hardest by the severe reduction to outright elimination of library services in their areas. So below are just a small sliver of all the services about to be lost in Florida:

• Tampa Bay Library Consortium – This organization entirely funded by IMLS and administers the statewide sharing of books between libraries, allowing people in public libraries to have access to academic collections and vice-versa as well as allowing academic libraries to share resources between themselves
• Statewide Ask A Librarian – This is a service that allows patrons to chat with a live library worker (NOT an AI Bot!) to ask questions, everything from “what are the library hours” to “I need to find articles on [X] subject” and beyond.
• The Florida Electronic Library – This is a resource that allows any Floridian to access high quality information across a huge variety of topics electronically. Used extensively in primary and secondary schools
• E-Rate program – this is a federal program that provides affordable broadband to library patrons who may not otherwise have access to the internet in their homes, often rural populations
• The Right Service at the Right Time – A service to help librarians guide patrons to finding available government assistance and social services. It is specific to individual counties in Florida, and contains access to things like the Florida Department of Children & Families, Social Security, Florida KidCare and Housing assistance.

The above are just a fraction of the things IMLS funds in this state, and similar programs are in existence in all 50 states through the state library systems. The IMLS does all this while taking up a tiny .003% of the Federal Budget. That hardly seems like government waste to me, serving as it does millions of Americans every single day. Which gives the lie to DOGE’s claim to be cutting government waste and reveals it as the ideological project it is to eliminate social goods which allow Americans freedom and stability. The project is to keep people poor, uneducated, and afraid so we will not rise up and overthrow the oligarchical overlords running our government. They are making great strides in that project, and libraries have long been one of the institutions standing in their way.

Libraries are overwhelmingly popular with the public, even after years of smear campaigns by conservative groups like so-called Moms for Liberty calling librarians “groomers and pedophiles”, and our Congresscritters know this. Hence why Congress has never allowed the elimination of the IMLS. But Trump/Musk are attempting to do by fiat what they could not do democratically. This is just the latest in a long line of national emergencies since January 20th, but it is one that has the least amount of chatter around it and will affect huge swathes of the population every bit as much as breaking Social Security or stopping crucial health research. I hope you will pay attention and lift up your voice to decry this illegal elimination of a vital agency of the federal government. Call your Congresscritters, email them, fax them, attend a protest in your area, join an organizing group, attend library board meetings and run for the open seats, attend city council meetings talking about library budgets, and join the ALA’s “Show Up For Our Libraries” movement in any way you can. People standing together have power, let’s remind the fascists among us that we will not stand for our necessary government being dismantled and sold off to the highest bidder.