BY PEPPER FISHER
Port Angeles – North Olympic Library System (NOLS) programs are facing a potentially big impact after receiving notification in mid-March that federal funding has been eliminated for programs that support rural and tribal libraries.
On March 14, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to significantly reduce its operations.
Until now, the IMLS distributes grant funds to the states, and the Washington State Library distributes the funds to NOLS and the other library systems. State Librarian Sara Jones said she received notification that this year’s $3.9 million grant, which was to be distributed statewide, had been terminated, and that on March 31, the entire 70-person IMLS staff was placed on administrative leave.
NOLS is funded primarily through Clallam County property taxes, but NOLS Executive Director Noah Glaude says the loss of federal funding will still have a big impact on library services in Clallam County.
“Well, our patrons would most immediately likely see our digital content, that nearly 30,000 people use every month, those ebooks, emagazines, the audio books, there could be less of those. There could be longer waits. Another big impact would be the Washington State Talking Book and Braille Library will lose nearly, I think, 30% of its funding. And it is really the main resource for books in braille. That is not a collection we have at NOLS. We don’t have a braille library or a large talking book library, and can’t provide that service directly to our patrons. Going forward, we’ll have to figure out, really, how to do that in different ways, or if we can at all.”
NOLS doesn’t have the capacity to cover the elimination of the funding and support that’s been provided by IMLS, so Glaude says it’s unknown at this time how the loss of services will be mitigated.
Last week, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown joined 20 other states in a lawsuit against the Trump administration to block the dismantling of the IMLS.
“Right now, there’s a lot of unknowns and just general uncertainty about what will happen in the future. I believe a hearing was going to be scheduled for today (Friday) for the Attorney General’s from about 20 different states that have sued the federal government, claiming that, basically, the IMLS should continue to be funded, and is required to be, and I believe that lawsuit will take some time to play out. So, right now we’re really just waiting to see what will happen, but kind of preparing for the worst.”
Glaude said they have been getting a lot of inquiries from library patrons about how this will play out, and NOLS will be posting updates at NOLS.org going forward.