GREENUP — On a Friday afternoon in April, circulation clerk Vicki Pierce locked up the Greenup Township Public Library with a book called “Walking on Water” in hand.
Pierce was taking the book to an elderly woman on her way home.
“We want people to use the library, and so if we have to bring the library to them, that works for us,” she said.
After cuts by the Trump administration to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the future of libraries in small towns and villages like Greenup is uncertain.
In March, President Donald Trump ordered seven departments including the Institute of Museum and Library Services to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Later that month, the acting director of the department put all of its roughly 70 IMLS employees on administrative leave.
The goal, according to Trump’s executive order, was to continue reducing the “elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary.”
In early April, the American Library Association and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees launched a lawsuit against IMLS’ acting director, Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency to stop the efforts to dismantle IMLS.
The American Library Association said in a press release that DOGE has also started to cut the grants libraries have already received.
“The elimination of federal funding for public libraries will be felt in every community across the country, and particularly in rural areas,” the ALA said.
Rural libraries in Illinois likely to be most affected
Libraries across rural Illinois rely on federal funding more than their suburban and urban counterparts.
According to IMLS data from 2019 for Illinois, federal funding made up about 1.63% of rural library operating budgets, compared to 0.43% of city library budgets. Most of the libraries that received large percentages of their budgets from the federal government in 2019 and 2022 were in rural areas or towns.
That’s because rural libraries are often small with tiny budgets, according to Kate McDowell, an IMLS grant recipient and associate professor with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Sciences.
She said most libraries do not have enough money to try something new, so they rely on grants to innovate.
“Those extra hours to get that little bit of expertise to help them fill out the forms right or just to have somebody cover the desk while you go to a computer with a person, that’s what gets axed in moments like this,” McDowell added
She said funding cuts to libraries particularly impact those on the edge of homelessness, who use computer access to apply for jobs to prevent becoming homeless or to get out of homelessness.
As someone whose research focuses on data, McDowell is concerned about a multi-year pause in IMLS’ data collection.
She said the database and funds help libraries justify their existence to taxpayers in a changing technological landscape and across political, income and geographical divides.
“What IMLS funds is not just the subsistence of libraries – although that’s there too – it’s their future,” McDowell said.
Reactions from Greenup
The Greenup Township Public Library is in Cumberland County, about 20 minutes south of Eastern Illinois University. The library has one main room, a back room with old yearbooks and other archives and an office.
“We’re a small town library, so [we have] a really small budget and honestly, I’m not sure how we manage to stay open,” said circulation clerk Vicki Pierce.
Three people work there and all are part-time employees, according to Pierce. She started working there eight years ago after she retired from her job as a high school English teacher.
In the last hour before closing on that Friday, four people visited. June Hayden was picking up books and audiobooks for her book club. Lauren Hamill was checking out movies, because her home internet was too slow for streaming services.
Shawna Ridgely was browsing books in boxes that were part of the library’s biannual book sale and eventually selected one for a quarter. She said she is worried about libraries closing, but she is also worried about the national debt.
“It does scare me that we get rid of spaces where people who can’t afford things [can go]. Now you’re cutting them out of the equation, but I also don’t know what the answer is, because we are trillions of dollars in debt, so we have to start looking at different places,” Ridgely said.
Both Ridgely and her mother were librarians at points in their career. Her mother raised her alone and instilled a love of reading then.
“As a parent, you can go in and you can say, ‘Yes,” Ridgely said. “So if the kid wants to have ten books to take home, you can say yes, and it’s not going to cost you anything and so that is a wonderful thing for communities, in my opinion.”
She also said most of what Trump says offends her on behalf of herself or others, but she also wanted to be careful of criticizing those in power for doing a job she does not know how to do.
Deb Kulp is still simmering after hearing about the Trump administration pulling back money already granted to Decatur schools.
“I don’t know how to speak other than swearing, when it comes to that certain idiot that’s in the White House,” Kulp said.
She thinks it should be illegal to claw back money that’s already being spent. “They had things earmarked for that money, you know, and you don’t, you just don’t do that to people.”
The American Library Association says that’s already starting to happen across the country to libraries and museums receiving IMLS grants.
According to Greenup Library’s new director, Marlaina Harper, the library is not expecting any federal money this year.
The grants vary year to year. In 2019, for example, the federal government covered a larger share Greenup Library’s operating costs than most libraries in the state, at about 5%.
In 2022, the Greenup Township Public Library received almost $15,000, or 19% of its revenue, from the federal government. While Pierce does not work on the budgets (and the current library director is new and declined to interview), she remembers that the library used a federal grant during COVID-19 to clean the ductwork, shelves and upholstery and install touchless toilets.
Pierce said she cannot imagine any good coming from cutting funding for libraries.
“Public libraries are entities that are already struggling, and we squeeze every penny three or four or five times to get the most out of it.”
The spring book sale usually raises about $350, according to Pierce. The library uses that money for prizes for summer reading challenges and summer workshops. One year, the library hosted an event where children could create their own stuffed animal version of creatures in a book they were reading.
Pierce said the cuts to libraries seem to target those hungry for knowledge.
“You have a section of your population that is trying to keep current, trying to stay educated, but they’re not being supported and when you take that away, you’re taking away their freedom.”
Despite the cuts from Washington, the services provided by the Greenup Library are staying the same for now.