For many librarians, the stakes of the job are high – they’re facing burnout, book bans, legislation pushed by rightwing groups, and providing essential resources in an effort to fill gaps in the US’s social safety net.
Now, as Donald Trump’s administration rolls out their agenda, many librarians are describing his policies as “catastrophic” to accessing information and the libraries themselves – institutions considered fundamental to democracy.
Rebecca Hass, the programming and outreach manager at the Anne Arundel county public library in Maryland, has seen the effects of Trump’s second term ripple in.
“The impact [is] on many different community partners and customers that are represented in some of the executive orders,” said Hass. “We get everyone at the library. When people lose their jobs, they come to the library. When they’re not sure what’s going on, they come to the library.”
Hass said the library received some pushback about LGBTQ+ programming, including protesters showing up to its trans Pride event. But the library is undeterred in efforts to meet community needs and supply resources, creating new resource pages on immigration and LGBTQ+ communities, and updating others. They have expanded partnerships, including with social workers in the library. Usage of the community pantry has increased.
Much of this is work the library has always done, Hass said, adding: “But now it’s taken on urgency and additional responsibilities.”
Emily Drabinski, an associate professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the City University of New York, said that what is happening to librarians now mirrors what is happening to other workers.
“You don’t get paid enough to meet your basic needs. Your autonomy at work is consistently under threat. People who think that they know better how to do your job are trying to get the power to push you out of your position,” she said.
Some librarians described the impact of institutions capitulating to censorship on their work. A librarian in the deep south, who asked to remain anonymous in order to protect their safety, described tensions rising on their library board, and how the library is taking pre-emptive measures to make it challenging to find titles considered “controversial”.
“I see all that being as a measure of: ‘If we fly under the radar, we’ll be safe,’” they said. “But it’s sad because who gets left behind – for staff members of color, [or] who are visibly queer, who are disabled, we don’t get to turn off that part of ourselves.”
Meanwhile, Imani, an academic librarian in Texas who declined to give their full name for privacy concerns, is an active public library user, said “DEI removal” happened in her workplace in 2023. Now, they’re seeing increased scrutiny on how funds are spent, especially in regard to large databases.
“It’s really important that people know that this isn’t new at all,” she said, adding that she knew a school librarian who retired several years ago due to fears of criminalization. “At this point, many librarians have done every single thing they can to save things.”
Also, Imani noted, librarians are doing their work with “very little money, very little support [and] higher, higher demand”.
Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” recently gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which the American Library Association noted greatly affects the important services they offer, including high-speed internet access, summer reading programs, veterans’ telehealth spaces and more, with the most intense losses in rural communities.
While the majority of public library funding comes from city and county taxes, according to EveryLibrary, the IMLS provides grants that support these critical services in every state.
Marisa Kabas, the independent journalist who writes the The Handbasket, obtained a copy of a letter sent by IMLS’s acting director, Keith Sonderling, announcing that state library grantee funding would be terminated immediately. (Sonderling previously declared his intention to “restore focus on patriotism” to the IMLS, which many groups noted as an attack on freedom of expression.)
The IMLS submitted a budget request of $280m for 2025.
“That’s nothing in terms of the federal budget, yet it’s going to affect every single library in the country,” said Jessamyn West, who works in a rural, public library in Vermont in addition to working with the Flickr Foundation. “It’s going to make them scramble, it’s going to make them worry, and it’s going to make them have to make really difficult choices for the services that they give to their patrons.”
In many cases, the money is already spent because of contracts libraries had with governments, West added.
“We’re all pretty furious,” West said.
Librarians are speaking out about what communities could lose, including internet access and workforce development in Kentucky, the Talking Book and Braille Center in New Jersey, digital hotspots in North Carolina, and much more outlined in reporting from Book Riot. As librarians grappled with losses that would directly affect their work, the IMLS Instagram account issued posts appearing to mock grantees.
“It’s catastrophic,” Drabinski said, adding that IMLS funds significant library infrastructure, including ebook platforms and interlibrary loan systems. “Without those funds, many of those systems will grind to a halt. All of our work is about to become harder at the same time that the need for our resources and services will explode.”
Drabinski continued: “What we want is for people to be able to read, and for people to have enough. The problems that we face as American workers are similar to yours, and we share a fight.”
