IMLS, although little known, has a larger budget than both the National Fund for the Arts and the National Fund for the Humanities. It was created in 1996 and has been reapproved several times in a bipartisan law signed by Trump in 2018.
With around 70 employees, the agency funds libraries and museums in all states and territories, often supporting essential but attractive back-office activities such as catalogues and database management.
The largest program, known as state grants, supplies around $160 million a year to state library institutions that cover a third to half of their budget, according to the chief executive of the State Library Association, an independent group representing library staff. The agency also provides direct competitive grants to institutions of all sizes and types.
The recent grant includes $250,000 at Seattle Public Library to support teenage mental health. $150,000 to the University of South Florida to develop library resources for autistic users. For $246,000, he developed curriculum materials based on the Schonburg Center collection for black culture studies.
The agency also supports smaller, lesser known agencies, such as Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire. Recently, I received a three-year $213,000 grant for stock of over 40,000 items from my collection.
“We have IML thank you for the means of hiring curators and for providing us with dedicated time through inventory to discover new aspects of shaker life that we can share with the public,” collection curator Shirley Wazida said in an email.
