The federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has canceled $3.9 million in grants to the Washington State Library, putting key programs and at least 30 jobs in jeopardy.
Administrators for the Washington State Library received notice the night of Wednesday, April 2, informing them retroactively that, effective April 1, their federal grant had been terminated.
“This grant is unfortunately inconsistent with IMLS’ priorities,” IMLS Acting Director Keith Sonderling, the recently-confirmed U.S. deputy secretary of labor who President Donald Trump appointed to IMLS’s head position on March 20, stated in a termination notice sent to the Washington State Library.
The order “independently and secondly” cites Trump’s March 14 executive order mandating that IMLS be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” as part of the ongoing “reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has deemed unnecessary” as reason for eliminating the Washington State Library’s grant.
Only the Washington state, California and Wisconsin state libraries have received notice of grant termination, according to Washington State Librarian Sara Jones.
“We have no understanding why three states could be determined to be able to be terminated and the rest couldn’t,” Jones said, adding that the Washington State Library has a five-year plan with goals that were recommended by the federal government.
“To say we had goals that were anti-administration when they were exactly what we were told to do, that’s a terrible reason to tell us that our grant’s not OK,” Jones said.
Other Washington state organizations that Jones said lost IMLS funding include the University of Washington, Tacoma Public Libraries and grants to tribal libraries.
Jones said that she and other Washington State Library staff were “shocked and disturbed” by the loss of the IMLS grants because, she said, “we have a formal written agreement that they would give us the money for the whole year … We were just shocked, and it’s super problematic, because this money has been consistent. It has been depended on, understood that there was no chance we were going to lose it, and we depend on it.”
On April 4, the same day that the Washington State Library learned it was losing its IMLS funding, Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown’s office announced that Washington state was joining 20 other state attorneys general in suing the Trump administration to stop the dismantling of the three agencies Trump ordered to dismantle in his March 14 executive order: IMLS, the Minority Business Development Agency and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
“Communities throughout Washington benefit from the work of these agencies to support libraries, promote minority-owned businesses, and protect workers’ rights,” Brown said in a news release. “Trump claims he’s carving up wasteful spending, but in reality he’s illegally gutting popular programs that support people with limited resources in our towns and cities.”
Washington State Library projects explicitly funded by IMLS include the Anytime Library consortium to provide small libraries expanded access to eBooks and audiobooks; extended WiFi in parking lots at 84 library branches in the state; workforce development programs for community members; and the libraries in Eastern and Western State Hospitals, nine Department of Corrections facilities and Echo Glen Children’s Center.
“We’re one of the most robust state libraries in the country, because we provide full services to libraries in prisons and through the Department of Corrections, and also the libraries that serve youth incarcerated individuals and also at Eastern and Western state hospitals,” Jones said. “While some state libraries provide some support for that, no one is all-in in the same way that we are.”
The nine Department of Corrections facility libraries were still open as of Thursday, April 10, but Department of Corrections Media Relation Manager Jim Kopriva said that could change any day.
“For many (prisoners), that is their window to the outside world,” Kopriva said of the Department of Corrections facility libraries.
Kopriva visited the libraries at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton and the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor on Wednesday to talk to library staff and inmates about the potential library closures and get statements from inmates about what the libraries mean to them.
“What the librarian told me is, ‘this is a library. Our mission is not to do any one thing, it’s to be a library, and to do all the important things that libraries do in your community, and to maintain that environment of calm, peace and personal development that libraries are meant to do elsewhere, and the incarcerated individuals that I spoke to felt intensely about the importance of the library,” Kopriva said.
One female inmate called the library “a treasury of hope,” Kopriva said, while a male inmate out lifting weights in the yard told him “the thing about these weights is that these weights don’t lift me, the library lifts me, the books lift me, and that’s how I’m going to get better. Like, I can get stronger here, but when I go over there, that’s how I get better.”
Kopriva called the loss of IMLS funding “nothing less than a significant challenge” and said he is concerned about recidivism rates should the libraries be closed.
“That’s how important it is as an institution, because that’s how they gaze outside, that’s how they gaze into their future, because nearly every one of them will be released,” Kopriva said. “Who are we going to turn out? … Who do you want next door? Who do you want to live in your community? Someone who has been idle in their jail sentence, or someone that’s really sought to nurture themselves and to rehabilitate and challenge themselves with new knowledge and prepare for their eventual release and career — someone that’s really spent time in that library?”
The Washington State Library had not made any definitive budget cuts as of Friday, as staff are still waiting for the outcome of the attorney generals’ lawsuit, which has a hearing on April 18, and for the Washington state Legislature to finalize the state budget.
With the state Legislature still struggling to fill a deficit of up to $16 billion, Jones is not optimistic about the support the Washington State Library will receive on the state level.
“I’m trying to align those two very bad situations together so that once we know what our funding situation is, we go forward and determine what staff we can support and what staff we can’t support,” Jones said.
One of Jones’ main concerns for Washington state residents is that they won’t realize the full impact the Washington State Library has on their communities until its programs and services are gone.
“We have different purposes, but when our doors close, that’s going to put an impact on the Timberland system,” Jones said, referring to the Timberland Library System, which has branches in Lewis, Thurston, Grays Harbor, Mason and Pacific counties.
While funded primarily through property taxes and timber revenue, Timberland libraries benefit from Washington State Library training programs, research capabilities, database licenses and community programs, including the Talking Book and Braille Library.
“I think the fabric and the ecosystem that we’ve provided over decades and decades, the tragedy of it won’t be seen until it’s gone,” Jones said.
When asked what community members concerned about the Washington State Library and their local libraries can do to show their support, Jones said, “When I woke up today, I still woke up in a democracy. I think people need to tell elected officials what matters to them.”
