The future of funding that supports family reading programs, technology classes for job seekers, digitization of local archives and other library programming across Texas is unclear following a recent executive order by President Donald Trump.
The cuts are aimed at “elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary,” according to the order. The cuts would hobble the federal agency that funnels funding to every state in the country, including $12.5 million annually to Texas.
The entire staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) was placed on administrative leave Monday.
“Although the president cannot fully eliminate IMLS without congressional approval, his order makes it clear that it is his goal to do so,” the Texas Library Association’s executive board wrote in a statement Monday. “IMLS funding accounts for less than 0.003% of the annual federal budget but has an enormous impact on communities across our state and the country.”
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators wrote a letter in defense of the IMLS and urged the administration to continue its operation. A bipartisan group from the U.S. House of Representatives followed suit.
The state agency that pays for most of the programs Texans associate with library services is the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. It relies on the IMLS for a third of the money it disburses to local libraries.
“We have funding for the short term that allows us to continue the programs and services that have been afforded to us through the IMLS funding. But right now, that future is uncertain," said Texas’ Assistant State Librarian Tim Gleisner.
“It's the desire of the agency to still provide those services … to the libraries and citizens of Texas throughout all the communities of the state. That's our No. 1 goal at this point as we watch the landscape and really try to strategize what the next steps might be.”
Local taxes make up the majority of public library budgets, but additional funding from the federal institute, which flows to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, supports programs and studies aimed at innovation and improving library services.
“For people who remember libraries as just rows and rows of books, the modern public library has changed a lot,” said Kerol Harrod, an assistant clinical professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University.
“Most public libraries also have e-books, audiobooks, streaming content, language learning software, genealogy software, and you've got knowledgeable people to help you learn how to use it.”
The federal funds are also used to improve accessibility to all Texans, he continued.
“My mother is legally blind, and she benefits from the Talking Book Program. They send her cassettes, and they send a specifically designed machine that is designed for visually impaired users,” Harrod said.
“This is a lifeline for her and 16,000 other visually impaired Texans, so that's just one aspect.”
The federal funds also allowed the Arlington Public Library to launch a delivery service, called Books on Wheels, that brings library materials to residents who are homebound or reside in assisted living facilities. Additional grants help the library system to purchase new materials for its 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program.
Another grant, funded with money from the institute, supported a project at the Fort Worth Public Library to partner with the University of North Texas in digitizing issues of the Fort Worth Press newspaper dating back to 1940.
“Our GED testing center, it was the first one in the nation in a library, our English language learning program that involved everyday applications, our homeless engagement program and our music classes and instrument lending programs all were started through project grants through the Institute of Museum and Library Services funding,” said Heather Lowe, interim director of the Dallas Public Library.
If that money were to go away?
“It would really impact our ability to try new things,” she said.
Both Lowe and Harrod shared their concerns that these changes will be felt most acutely by rural libraries.
“They're already fighting for their survival. They operate with fewer resources, a smaller tax base, often with volunteer staff,” Harrod said. “But I fear that some of the smaller libraries in Texas, and there are a lot of them … I'm afraid that some of them will have to completely shut down or cut their services back and their hours back so much that it's not functioning in the way that is really meaningful to people.”
The statewide interlibrary loan system would also suffer, said Gretchen Pruett, TLA past president and a retired public library director.
“In our rural communities, a lot of times there's not that much square footage [in libraries] … and so the federal funds from IMLS help subsidize all the transporting of materials from place to place and the software that helps us navigate that,” she said.
“That's been a really important program for small and rural communities because the [statewide] collection is so much bigger than what they can physically house in their own buildings.”
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