President Donald Trump this month signed an executive order calling for getting rid of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, or IMLS, “to the maximum extent of the law.”
The IMLS awards grants every year, the congressionally authorized institute’s mission is to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.”
Last year, Arizona got nearly $4 million in grants from the IMLS. The money the state has gotten over the past several years has paid for projects including the Arizona Memory Project and training and books for libraries in Yavapai County.
Jason Macoviak, library manager at the Copper Queen Library in Bisbee, which was awarded a national medal by IMLS this past year, was at a recent gathering at ASU with institute officials to talk about the future of libraries. When he got home from those meetings, he heard the news about the executive order.
Macoviak joined The Show to discuss what IMLS does for his library.
Full conversation
JASON MACOVIAK: So, the way that IMLS handles their funding, so they distribute federal funds to state libraries, and then libraries like ours apply to the state library for grants. So over the years, we've used that process to apply for federal funds to do things that we normally couldn't do within our own city budget.
So, for example, we, let's see, that was six years ago we applied for a grant to open up what we call the Copper Queen Library Annex, and what that is, it's an off-site location, in a neighborhood that's farthest away from our main library, and it's a neighborhood that also, borders along Naco, Arizona, as well as across the border to Naco, Sonora. So without that funding, we would not have been able to do that. And that's just a really good example of what kind of impact that the loss of IMLS will have on libraries like ours.
So over the years, we've, we've also applied for grants to update a really outdated health collection, really, expand our children's library with great nonfiction resources for kids in our community and our homeschool community. We've used federal funds to start our internet hotspot program. And that's a program that allows us to literally check out the internet to our patrons. So those are just some of the things that we have done with these federal funds. And I know that the Arizona State Library also uses those funds to do a whole array of things that every library in Arizona benefits from.
MARK BRODIE: Well, so, yeah, what would that mean for you going forward if that money were no longer available, and I wonder if it's maybe a little bit of a different impact, given, as you say, it's more of a grant based thing than sort of a a yearly supply of money that you're counting on.
MACOVIAK: Correct. Yes. But the great thing about this program is that libraries of any size can come up with a really great idea that for a service or a program that they can implement in their community that benefits their patronage. Also, we're talking, we're talking, I think the budget for these federal funds are about 0.003% of the annual federal budget. But when you look at these programs and services that libraries have created, the return on investment is huge.
So it's, it's really taking this pot of money and making it available for all these community resources that impact, you know, a lot of our, our city people. It's a hard thing to think about, and I don't think we're quite at the point where we know how it's going to affect future funding, but I know a lot of, my colleagues, both within our county system and throughout the state, are very concerned about the potential impact on just how we serve our communities.
BRODIE: Are there particular projects that you were already sort of drawing up ideas for that, hey, if we could get this grant,, from this program, we could do this, or like is there a concern that stuff you've already done some things maybe you mentioned already, like things that you maybe were hoping to get some of that that grant money to continue paying for like. are any of those things potentially in danger?
MACOVIAK: So yeah, so just looking at this year, we're planning on submitting some grants to extend our internet hotspot lending program. We're also looking at creating an AV type space where, multipurpose space where we can use, we can use that space to do telehealth, people can do private Zoom calls from that space. People can use it as a recording studio. We can record podcasts. People can come in and record music, and that was the next big project we were looking at doing. So if these funds were to somehow disappear, we would have to try to figure out another place to get those funds.
BRODIE: Well, I wanted to ask you about potential other sources of funding, like, are, are there any, like especially in a small rural community like Bisbee, like are there other places you can look for money?
MACOVIAK: Well, this one, this one is the easiest to access. So, yeah, if this were to disappear, we would have to try to figure something else out, and that does get challenging when you're in a small and rural place where they're not bigger pots of money to draw from.
BRODIE: I'm curious about sort of the role of the library in a community like Bisbee, and you referenced this in terms of maybe putting an annex in a part of the town that is far away or having mobile hotspots so people who don't have access to the internet can get it. What, what is the role of the library in a community like Bisbee?
MACOVIAK: So, our library, over the years, has really transitioned into a really useful and used community space. So, you know, a lot of people think of libraries, they think of them as just a repository of books, and yes, we have books, but we have so much more than just books. Over the last few years, we have created a library of things, which checks out non-traditional library items, stuff like ukuleles and blood pressure monitoring kits. You know, people come for us, come to us for information and resources so we can refer people. If we don't do something here in the library, we can certainly find somewhere in the community that does.
So we've become really, a trusted spot with our community. And just in terms of community building, we love the, you know, we're, we're not a shushing library, and actually sometimes we, we get in trouble for that. But there's a reason for that, is because we're trying to build community. We want people to come in and talk with their neighbors, talk with their community members, you know, we feel like that kind of fostering really leads to a tighter knit community and you know, the, the more you talk with people, the more you realize that we have more in common than we have not in common.
BRODIE: Do you have a sense of like what percentage of the library's budget usually comes from the IMLS? I know that it's, it can sort of vary based on the amount of grant money you get year to year, but like is this a significant portion of your budget that could potentially be going away?
MACOVIAK: So, just take this year, for example, and we're putting in for about $10,000 in federal funding for some things that we want to do. So, that was just this year when we applied for a grant for the, open up the annex, that was like a $25,000 budget. So, it depends year to year what we're doing, but, you know, our budget's only over $200,000 annually. So, if you look at something like a $25,000 grant, that's a big percentage of our budget. And especially if the state library loses their resources, we use those resources all the time, all types of things, that potentially would be, would be gone.
