In 1881, industrialist Andrew Carnegie built a public library in his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland. At the time, Carnegie had amassed a Musk-sized fortune in 19th-century dollars. He made it his life’s work to fund libraries across the United States and the English-speaking world because he believed strongly in the power of education to change the lives of immigrants like him.
“Between 1886 and 1919, Carnegie’s donations of more than $40 million paid for 1,679 new library buildings in communities large and small across America,” writes the National Park Service. Carnegie built the libraries “but insisted that communities maintain them and provide the necessary funding for operations,” according to the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Carnegie’s charge to communities to care for his gift seems to have fallen by the wayside in modern America. Any doubt about that is being dispelled as hundreds of millions of dollars of grants by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) have been canceled following a March 14 executive order eliminating the office, and the howls of outrage are deafening.
In the internet age, how necessary are public libraries? And if they fulfill an important role in the community, why should the federal government fund them?
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Once again, we’re in uncharted territory, with most of these grants having been authorized by Congress and many libraries having contracted to receive them. It’s a legal thicket that will have to be cleared before these and other cuts are made permanent.
In fiscal year 2024, the Institute of Museum and Library Services distributed nearly $267 million in congressionally approved funds to libraries and museums in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and to library, museum, and archives programs through grants. It serves 35,000 museums and 123,000 libraries across the country, according to its website.
Every state receives an amount of money proportional to that state’s population. Often states use it to offer services to every library that would be difficult for individual libraries to purchase, like access to a pool of eBooks, subscriptions to research databases or materials for summer reading programs.
On March 31, the entire roughly 70-person staff was abruptly placed on administrative leave after the Department of Government Efficiency met with agency leaders, according to their union AFGE Local 3403, a branch of the American Federation of Government Employees.
As “community hubs,” public libraries are important, especially in rural areas. But is it really a question of federal money being the difference between life and death for a library or museum? State and local communities don’t want to be forced to prioritize public money. What’s more important than a public library? What’s less important? Each town, each city, each state must answer those questions for themselves. And if the money comes up short, raising taxes is always an option.
It’s absurd; our communities have become addicted to this federal money, and it’s partly responsible for giving us a $37 trillion national debt. States and local governments have become little more than paymasters handing out federal money to one favored group or another instead of setting priorities and funding them with local tax dollars.
I loved going to the library as a kid in the 1960s. That smell of old books, the stern-looking librarian who was actually very nice, trying to keep quiet when goofing off with friends; it was an America that no longer exists.
Today, libraries have programs for children, seniors, the lovelorn, and others in the community who need a place to gather in a commonality of interests.
If a library needs federal money for those activities, perhaps there should be a reevaluation of local and state priorities to fund them.
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