In the past few weeks, there has been a massive outcry from the public library community that the defunding of a recent target of DOGE – the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) – will lead to the obliteration of library services that patrons have come to depend on and that the IMLS has helped fund since 1996. If you Google IMLS, what comes up, not surprisingly, are negative reactions to the defunding of this organization, as if the sky will fall if the IMLS is not adequately funded. As a former librarian, I hold an unusual position as a supporter of defunding the Institute of Museum and Library Services. As a conservative, I wonder why a federal agency overseeing local public libraries exists.
Up until 1996, libraries provided adequate services to patrons without the help of the IMLS. Skeptics must ask, “At what cost are these services provided?” This agency spent $24 million in administrative expenses last year with 38 employees, more than half the staff, earning over $100,000 annually. Whenever a federal agency becomes involved in the affairs of local institutions, it sucks money from local taxpayers that could have stayed in their states. The reasoning behind defunding the IMLS to promote efficiency is similar to that of dismantling the Department of Education. These federal organizations do nothing but cost the taxpayers more money due to unnecessary administrative costs; they perform services that should remain at the state and local level because there is no Constitutional mandate to justify their existence.
Over a decade ago, in 2014, the Institute of Museum and Library Services earned the “Golden Hammer Award,” an accolade given by the Washington Times’ each week for “examples of waste, fraud or abuse of tax dollars.” In criticizing the granting of funds to museums and universities that already had large endowments, the newspaper explained that the “IMLS’ trickle-up theory of grant-giving literally takes money from struggling American taxpayers to fill the coffers of cultural and educational institutions that appear able to operate just as well without the public funds.” Ultimately, the IMLS won this prize “for subsidizing the operations of the already rich.”
Of course, the IMLS also supports local public libraries, most of which don’t have significant endowments. It “grants” money to state libraries – basically returning a smaller amount of the money that the states send to Washington, D.C. – and then the state libraries use these funds to finance interlibrary loan (ILL) services among other things. I certainly appreciate the importance of a state-wide interlibrary loan service. I was employed until recently at a public library where I was responsible for administering the ILL service. I saw how valuable it was for patrons to get the books they needed not held by their own library. I also recognized how important it is to provide access to the material of libraries statewide to refute the argument that a library can “ban” a book. If a library can get the book from another library, it is not prohibiting the reading of that book and therefore not “banning” it. You have to wonder, however, why ILL needs to be funded at the federal level anyway. Such bureaucracy only adds to costs. All that is really needed for ILL is statewide administration thus saving taxpayers the expense of federal involvement.
Financial reasons alone relating to the inefficiency of a federal agency administering services that could be handled on the state level should justify the defunding of the IMLS. But an additional consideration for defunding the IMLS is its promotion of a woke ideology which includes the whole “alphabet soup” of initiatives: SEL, LGBTQIA+, DEI, etc. According to its 2022-2026 “strategic plan,” one of the major goals of the IMLS is to build “a workplace culture that . . . embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Here’s just one of the many examples of the misused IMLS funds: between September 2021 and February 2023, the New Hampshire State Library (NHSL) used over $20,000 in IMLS grant funds to pay for the training of Youth and Adult Services Coordinator Deborah “Deb” Dutcher in “social emotional learning” (SEL) to support “a community’s social and emotional needs by approaching librarianship, library programs and library partnerships through a social emotional lens.” Deb then organized training for library staff members in SEL so that they could implement these controversial techniques in the children’s rooms of their libraries
In addition to funding public libraries, the IMLS gives millions of dollars to institutions of higher education, which often already have large endowments and charge exorbitant tuition. In 2024, about $17 million was granted to universities, including a number of large grants to graduate schools of library and information science accredited by the American Library Association. The University of Tennessee School of Information Sciences was awarded $393,425 by the IMLS for a study “to better understand and meet the needs of LGBTQ+ library users.” This project “will benefit libraries and LBGTQ+ community members and provide a blueprint for future studies involving other marginalized communities.” Another quarter million dollars was given to the University of South Carolina’s School of Information Science to “compile local, regional, and national health resources to create a centralized, visible, and sustainable online LGBTQIA+ consumer health information guide.” Simmons University School of Library and Information Science received a similar amount to “implement a nationwide curriculum-sharing system of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) courses to provide LIS students access to courses that prepare them to work with diverse communities… The project outcomes will include a national platform for sharing EDI curricula and tools, as well as training materials for inclusive pedagogy and anti-racist education.” In 2023, the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies was awarded $313,318 to study why BIPOC teens read Japanese comic books!
In addition to the large sums given directly to ALA-accredited graduate schools, IMLS also helps students pay their tuition at these schools through scholarships awarded by state libraries. $664,079 in funds granted to California by the IMLS were awarded to students as scholarships to pay library school tuition at ALA-approved schools. IMLS also supports the American Library Association directly. In 2024, the ALA Office of Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services was granted $491,030 and the ALA Public Programs Office got $170,824. Some states even pay their annual ALA membership dues with IMLS funds. No wonder the ALA has called this defunding by the Trump administration an “assault.” This woke political lobbying group has a lot to lose if financial support from the IMLS gets cut off, so it has mobilized its affiliate EveryLibrary which “condemns” the “termination” of IMLS grants as an “attack.” The ALA has also instructed its local public library member libraries to vociferously object to this defunding and they have done so obediently, posting alarmist propaganda that fails to give taxpayers the whole story.
Another library service that is often funded using the money that each state gets from the IMLS is children’s summer reading programs. Many of these programs pay an organization called the Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP) for unnecessary support and materials. I wrote about CSLP in my very first Substack article, “Marxist Summer Reading Programs.” Since the posting of this article in June 2023, the CSLP has mysteriously deleted all of the information that I highlighted in my article and only includes newsletter back to 2024, having deleted those with the most egregiously disturbing information that I cited. I no longer have access to their members-only material, so I can only hope that the manuals provided to children’s librarians have been similarly cleaned up. The fact remains that the IMLS was funding this organization back in 2023 when it was heavily promoting the woke agenda exposed in my article.
As the truth comes out about the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, it will become apparent that the sky is not falling. States will realize that they can run their own ILL services, provide access to online materials, and run children’s summer reading programs without federal assistance. Our public libraries will be better off without the IMLS, a corrupt organization that is taking a significant percentage of the money that the federal government gives it—money that originally comes from taxpaying citizens in all fifty states—and spending it on unnecessary administrative costs and woke initiatives embraced by one of its major beneficiaries—the American Library Association—that are destroying our public libraries.
