Federal funding to train librarians and pay for innovations like online library resources was suddenly stopped April 1 – stranding museums and libraries across the country – thanks to the Trump administration and Elon Musk and DOGE.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order March 14 that demanded crippling cuts to Institute of Museum and Library Services, calling for it to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” A little over two weeks later and after a brief meeting with DOGE, the small federal agency was forced to put its entire staff on leave. IMLS awards grant funding to libraries and museums across the country.
In Pennsylvania and Bucks County, funding cut impacts could most keenly be felt by Power Library, Pennsylvania’s e-library resource database, available to libraries, library patrons and public school districts.
Maryam Phillips, executive director of Philadelphia-based Hosting Solutions and Library Consulting (HSLC) said the federal funding through the IMLS pays for Power Library.
HSLC is a non-profit library technology support organization.
Bucks County Library’s Power Library e-library is available to patrons with a valid library card and PIN number. It offers access to Consumer Reports, Heritage Quest (an ancestry and local history resource) Linked In learning and many additional news, entertainment and research resources.
Power Library.org availability is at greatest risk from the IMLS funding shortage, according to Phillips.
She said electronic resources like Power Library and its shared databases provide core services to library users in Pennsylvania.
“Of the $5.9 million [IMLS funding approved], about $3 million of that is used for statewide and local grants to libraries. Power library comes into play at the state level,” Phillips explained.
Among the hardest hit by e-library reductions would be library patrons and public school districts. Phillips said all public libraries participate with Power Library and many public school districts do, too.
If a public school district is required to shoulder the cost – or give up – Power Library for each building it operates, the cost would be $56,000 per building per year. Bucks County has 13 public school districts, representing 110 different K-12 buildings, according to Phillips.
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“If all of those schools participate from Grades K-12, it would cost about $6 million,” she said.
A Pennsylvania school library survey reported about 25 percent of public school districts rely on Power Library for their online resources, Phillips said.
The public library cost to continue Power Library – per branch – would be about $73,000 per year, she said.
“For about 20 library locations the annual amount would be $1.4 million,” she said.
In 2024, IMLS awarded and distributed $266.7 million through grant making, research and policy development to advance, support and empower America’s museums, libraries and related organizations, the IMLS website said.
Christi Buker, executive director of the Pennsylvania Library Association in Mechanicsburg, Cumberland County, said on March 14 not only had Congress passed the IMLS budget, President Donald Trump signed its funding approval.
“Libraries play an important role in our democracy, from preserving history to providing access to government information, advancing literacy and civic engagement, and offering access to a variety of perspectives.”
“The current budget is in place … The administrative level can’t just eliminate it, and they can’t eliminate funding that was approved by Congress and signed off on by the president,” Buker said.
For many museum and library organizations this round of promised grant money has already been spent, a USA Today report noted.
“For all intents and purposes the funding for the rest of this fiscal year is unavailable. Even though the money is there and was approved to allocate it, there is no one to administer it. As of April 1, everything is up in the air,” Phillips said.
About 70 employees who worked at the IMLS were placed on paid administrative leave in early April, leaving allocated funding in distribution limbo.
“All of our funding comes from the county and the state. What these [federal cuts] do is give us a whole lot of uncertainty around that state money,” said Adam Gilbert-Cole, Bucks County Free Library system district consultant.
Gilbert-Cole said while the federal funding does not directly pay for daily Bucks County Library operations, in 2024, Pennsylvania received $5.9 million from the IMLS.
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The 2025 amount is also set at $5.9 million, according to Buker.
“We won’t lose money for books or necessarily [to cut] employees, but the statistics gathering – the ability of the state to verify we’re meeting certain standards – all that goes away,” Gilbert-Cole explained.
Bucks County is “in a good position” because of county and local municipal funding support, according to Gilbert-Cole.
“Other counties in Pennsylvania are not as lucky,” he said.
Rural and remote area libraries are predicted to be hardest hit by the IMLS funding cuts, USA Today reported.
Buker said the 2026 budget process would begin in Congress soon.
“We don’t know where that’s going – and it doesn’t look positive,” she added.
The American Library Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the union representing the museum and library employees, announced it would sue the Trump Administration over funding cuts, which the Pennsylvania Library Association supports, Buker said.
“Libraries play an important role in our democracy, from preserving history to providing access to government information, advancing literacy and civic engagement, and offering access to a variety of perspectives,” said ALA President Cindy Hohl. “These values are worth defending. We will not allow extremists to threaten our democracy by eliminating programs at IMLS and harming the children and communities who rely on libraries and the services and opportunities they provide.”
Buker urges community members to contact their state and federal representatives and senators about the cuts – and to ask Congressional members to push back against them.
Power Library has never been free of charge, though up until now it has been funded through government grants to benefit citizens and school children, Phillips explained.
“The federal funds are up in the air. We have no idea what will happen by July 1 – which is the start of the new fiscal year. The loss of these funds impacts what can be made available,” Phillips said.
