Adam Webb has worked in and around public libraries for 18 years, and as the executive director of the Garland County Library, he says funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has strengthened the library system. It was an IMLS grant that allowed the library to fund its “bookmobile”—which brings a book checkout system and other services to rural parts of the county in Arkansas, or to those who are unable to visit their central branch location.
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Visitors of the "bookmobile" can also access free Wi-Fi, just one of the public services that Webb says make libraries essential to community members.
Webb and other concerned librarians fear such services will be cut with the gutting of the IMLS as directed by President Donald Trump in his March 14 Executive Order titled: “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.”
“Because we're a rural, poor state, Arkansas really depends on those federal funds to come through, and when the tap gets shut off, services are [also] going to get shut off because [people] can’t afford to pay for them on their own,” Webb says.
Trump’s Executive Order—and its subsequent effect on the IMLS, and therefore, libraries across the nation—follow a major directive of Trump’s second term in office: cutting down on “waste” at the federal level.
Webb says the shifts at the IMLS, though, are just one way in which libraries are being affected by Trump’s return to office, and that librarians are also concerned about wider issues such as the censorship of books.
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A deeper look at the effects of cuts at the IMLS
Trump’s Executive Order shrunk seven federal agencies, including the IMLS, and since then, the majority of the IMLS staff has been placed on administrative leave, according to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3403, a union representing the IMLS workers.
“Earlier today, the Institute of Museum and Library Services notified the entire staff that they are being placed on administrative leave immediately,” AFGE 3403 said in a statement on March 31. “The notification followed a brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership.”
In early April, the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest union representing museum and library workers, sued the Trump Administration, for its IMLS cuts, citing the importance of local libraries as trusted public institutions, and stating that the IMLS’ closure had already caused a domino effect of harm the operations of libraries across the nation.
Cindy Hohl, president of the ALA, says that many of the 125,000 libraries in the nation utilize IMLS funding to support things like summer reading programs and translation services. Without the services of the IMLS, she says libraries are already facing “huge challenges”—and she has heard of short-term panic and “tough decisions” being made from librarians who are members of the ALA.
“The greatest impact to reduction in funding and services will be the small and rural communities across this country,” Hohl says. “How can any legislators say that small and rural communities don't need access to the Internet, they don't need access to public computers, they don't need access to books and reading?”
IMLS was first created and funded by Congress in 1996 and charged with supporting the nation’s libraries and museums. The IMLS awarded $266 million in grants and research funding to cultural institutions last year. Hohl says the problem with the federal government kicking this funding of library services from the IMLS down to the states and local governments is that “we don’t have a comparable model” of the kinds of free services available to communities the way they are in libraries.
She also points to the high approval rates of libraries— the ALA reports that 92% of parents and 90% of voters have favorable opinions of libraries, and that over half of voters view public libraries as essential local institutions. She remembers during the COVID-19 pandemic, how libraries were utilized as pick-up sites for materials and food, as spaces to apply for benefits and jobs, and as locations for community members to “stay connected to the world around them.”
"That's why the American Library Association became a co-plaintiff to challenge this Executive Order, because we feel that it is imperative for Americans to understand what is happening right before their eyes,” Hohl says. “We cannot allow the elimination of libraries in this country, and I do believe that the day that libraries are closed in this country is the day democracy dies.”
And it’s not just the ALA and library-specific advocacy groups who have spoken out against the Trump Administration’s cuts. On April 3, major book publishers Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks also submitted a letter to Congress advocating for libraries, stating that the gutting of the IMLS “would leave millions of Americans without access to the books, tools, and other resources required to participate in the modern world.”
Webb says that in Arkansas, the IMLS has been essential in supporting a resource sharing program across the state called Traveler. The State Library that gets the money from IMLS for this program was able to buy a large database package—and Webb says that if libraries in Arkansas were to purchase this database individually, it would cost close to $50 million.
“Are you saving taxpayers money? No, you're saving the federal government that money, but it's being passed down to the state and local level,” Webb says. “This is being done in such a haphazard way that it should be really concerning to people across the aisle.”
Africa Hands. an assistant professor in the department of information science at the University at Buffalo, has had her IMLS grant terminated, a grant which funded her research on examining public libraries as an information resource to college bound patrons. Now, she says she’s unsure of how the results of her research will be disseminated to libraries so they can better understand how their work affects high school students and those returning to college.
Past her own research, though, she says the IMLS cuts will affect those who utilize libraries, but also those who work in the field of libraries—as staff at local levels begin to get laid off, and as those studying to become librarians watch what is occurring at the federal level.
“Think about what it says to future librarians, the folks that I teach, to see all that's happening in their communities,” Hands says. “It can be demoralizing for faculty and students to know that their field, their life's work, is being dismantled. It has a personal, emotional, and mental impact.”
The removal of books at the Department of Defense campuses and wider book censorship
Beyond the IMLS, librarians have also been concerned by multiple instances of books being removed from libraries related to the armed forces.
In a January Executive Order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” Trump banned DEI materials in kindergarten through 12th grade education, but several military colleges—including West Point and the Naval Academy have taken up these orders. Earlier this year, the Department of Defense (DOD) circulated a memo calling for a review of library books in educational settings for the children of U.S. military personnel and DOD’s civilian employees, according to the Guardian.
Since then, the U.S. Naval Academy released a list of the books they have removed in an effort to remain in accordance with Trump’s measures to “end DEI.” These books include Janet Jacobs’s Memorializing the Holocaust, Ibram X. Kend’s “How to Be Anti-Racist,” and Maya Angelou’s seminal autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” They also removed multiple books related to gender and sexuality.
The academies who have participated in the removal have received backlash from advocates and lawmakers alike, with multiple Democratic representatives sending a letter to the Army, Navy, and Air Force on April 7, calling the book removals a “blatant attack on the First Amendment” representing an “alarming return to McCarthy-era censorship.”
On April 15, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that they were joining students in Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools on military bases to sue the Trump Administration.
“The implementation of these EOs, without any due process or parental or professional input, is a violation of our children's right to access information that prevents them from learning about their own histories, bodies, and identities,” said Natalie Tolley, a plaintiff on behalf of her three children in DoDEA schools, in a statement from the ACLU. “I have three daughters, and they, like all children, deserve access to books that both mirror their own life experiences and that act as windows that expose them to greater diversity.”
Beyond the censorship at DOD schools, librarians are also concerned with how the new Administration is tackling issues of censorship at the local level. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights announced, via a press release issued on Jan. 24, titled “U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax,” that they were dismissing complaints of book banning. This came after PEN America released documentation in November 2024 stating that there was a “nearly 200% surge in school book bans during the 2023-2024 school year.”
John Chrastka, executive director of EveryLibrary, the national political action committee for libraries, says that he and EveryLibrary have been fighting at the state-level over the last couple of years against censorship laws and book bans, and says he sees states as the “laboratory of censorship and discrimination in public and school libraries.”
Webb is one of one of the named plaintiffs in a censorship case against the state of Arkansas that still is in the courts, but says that the issue with the censorship at the federal level is not just what it’s doing for those students, but the wider message it sends.
“I think that messaging coming from the federal government is just going to embolden people to say, ‘See, we, we were right,’” he says. “We knew what you guys had on your shelves was bad because now the federal government is taking it out of service academies and removing it from military based libraries.”