SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Libraries and museums across the U.S. have spent the past month scrambling. That's ever since President Trump issued an order to cut the agency that grants them federal funding. And as NPR's Andrew Limbong reports, the cuts have left small and rural libraries particularly vulnerable.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: It's not as if libraries were having an easy go of it before the funding cuts came.
ELIZABETH FOX: We've had quite a roller coaster of a year.
LIMBONG: Elizabeth Fox is the president of the South Dakota Library Association.
FOX: We had two bills in our state legislature that were anti-library.
LIMBONG: One would have drastically cut funding to the state library. The other would have subjected the librarians to criminal prosecution for lending out certain material.
FOX: We won both of those, only to have the IMLS gutted the day after our legislature ended.
LIMBONG: The IMLS is the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It's an independent agency that awards grant money to libraries and museums across the U.S. In March, IMLS staffers were put on paid administrative leave following a President Trump executive order that the agency be eliminated as much as legally allowed. NPR has reached out to representatives for Keith E. Sonderling, who is Trump's appointee to heavy IMLS, but we haven't heard back yet. California, Washington and Connecticut have had their grant funding pulled entirely. But other states, such as South Dakota, are stuck in limbo.
FOX: Because there are no staff there to process continuing grants for states.
LIMBONG: Literally, nobody to answer emails or pick up phone calls.
FOX: We're stopping our courier service between libraries.
LIMBONG: South Dakota used IMLS funds to hire a courier service that bounced between the big libraries and the smaller ones to handle interlibrary loans.
FOX: We have some very, very small libraries. Many libraries are rooms in the county courthouse or somewhere else. They don't have their own buildings, so they don't have large collections.
LIMBONG: Fox says interlibrary loans aren't ending, it just might take a little longer as each library has to figure out how to deal with the cost of shipping books via mail. Kate Laughlin is the executive director of the National Association for Rural & Small Libraries.
KATE LAUGHLIN: Small and rural libraries, as defined by the IMLS, make up about 77% of our public libraries.
LIMBONG: Laughlin says all libraries have the potential to be impacted by these federal funding cuts.
LAUGHLIN: But the small and rural libraries disproportionately utilize those resources and the funding, and in many cases, it is a genuine lifeline. Without those funds, they would simply not be able to keep their doors open.
LIMBONG: Libraries aren't at that point quite yet, but they are altering services - interlibrary loan in South Dakota, but also libraries in Mississippi had to cut access to Hoopla, which provides e-books and audiobooks. Laughlin's own organization had a grant to provide management training to small and rural librarians. That's gone now, too.
And, of course, it's not just strictly libraries feeling the cuts. Sam Fleishman is the project manager for the Autistic Voices Oral History Project, which got an IMLS grant to start a fellowship program. Then...
SAM FLEISHMAN: April 1, first day of Autism Acceptance Month, we had to tell our crew, everyone involved, everything's on pause. Yeah, not how we'd like to celebrate this month, obviously.
LIMBONG: There are multiple lawsuits against the White House aiming to stop the IMLS cuts, but as of right now, museums and libraries are simply in a state of not knowing what their immediate future looks like.
Andrew Limbong, NPR News.
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