Public Libraries On The 2024 Chopping Block Over and Over Again
The headlines are a bleak reminder that it is happening now.
It’s always the library first. In an era of censorship and destabilization of public libraries by those eager to dismantle democratic institutions, alarm bells need to be ringing louder about what’s happening nationwide.
Every year, budget cuts are on the docket for New York Public Libraries. This year, the cut would involve slashing of hours and services to libraries through several boroughs. The library and its supporters fought back and ultimately won, but we’ll see this fight again next year, just like we saw it last year and the previous year and the one before that. Meanwhile, the New York Police Department has a baffling 86 member public relations department.
It’s not just the New York Public Library. Here’s an incomplete list of stories from 2024 about libraries that could be closing or have already closed. There are also stories here about funding cuts so substantial that the shoestrings the libraries are working with will be so threadbare that closure won’t be out of the question soon.
First up, one of the biggest, and the one that has not seen the rallying that NYPL have: Madison Public Libraries in Wisconsin face a huge array of possible cuts with city’s huge budget deficit.
Skillman Southwestern Branch library in Dallas, Texas. The cuts here conveniently amount to the same cost as the raises that the city council and mayor want for themselves.
Without more funding, two branches of the Pikes Peak Library District (CO) may need to shut down.
The Alamonte Springs Public Library (FL) was going to be closed this year. It was narrowly saved from that fate.
The Irvington branch library of the Alameda County Library (CA) closed at the end of July.
Lubbock, Texas, City Council considered shutting down the Godeke Branch Library this year–the most popular branch of the system–and the reasons are worthy of some time with. The branch was narrowly saved this month.
Elsewhere in Texas, a branch of the library was under potential closure in Corpus Christi. It’ll remain open, fortunately. A very active Moms For Liberty chapter has been challenging books and book policies in that library system but the committee to review those changes was just dissolved.
St. Charles County Library (MO) threatened to close down due to funding issues. This library has a book banning history with adult books, created new library card classifications, and their funding issues–the legitimate reality that digital material use is up and the budgets for it are not–stems from the board’s own inability to do its job. The news of this possibility was, as you might expect, not welcome from residents and the board decided they didn’t actually need to close three libraries. (Related, the public school system here has been besieged by bigoted book banners as well).
In right-wing takeover library cuts, the small public library in Hayden, Idaho, may no longer have Sunday hours. When proposed last year because the board believed people need to be in church on Sunday, it didn’t pass. This year, they’re trying the budget cut route.
San Ramon Public Library in California had to close Mondays because of budget cuts this year.
Eugene Public Library (OR) has had to make significant cuts in their library over the last year, with more possible cuts to come.
The Dayton Metro Library (OH) was forced to end Sunday hours after budget cuts.
York County Libraries (PA) cite inflation as why they might need to reduce hours of operation. This story is the most non-informative piece about what’s going on among the lot. York has seen years of book challenges and bans in the schools.
$150,000 was cut from the Waverly, Iowa, public library budget. That amounts to about 10%, going by their 2024 proposed budget in December 2023.
Salem Public Library (OR) would feel the sharpest cuts in citywide budget deficits, with more library workers being laid off than workers in any other department. The decision on this one ended up not being as dire as it could, as all current librarians will keep their positions. Why? The community showed up.
Loads of public libraries across Michigan also faced potential closures and cuts this year, including Detroit Public Library, Betsie Valley, Plainwell Library, Alpena Public Library (which saw an attack campaign similar to that in Patmos Library earlier, wherein librarians were accused of being groomers, among other things), and Reed City, among others. In every one of the votes on these mileage rates at the polls this summer, the libraries walked away winners. People want their public libraries funded.*
Then there’s this. Most of the library staff at Western Illinois University were cut in the mass layoffs announced this month. This is an academic library, but it is a publicly funded institution, so it deserves space here. Want to see what that looks like for students? It’s this:
The only opportunity students will have to access reference librarians are between noon and 5 pm Monday through Thursday. They will have absolutely no access on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays. Here’s last spring’s reference hours for comparison:
That is a whole lost day with closure on Friday, plus 20 other hours through the week. And that is for the main campus. The satellite campus will close its current library space and require students to go to a new service station, request a book, and then someone will need to hike across campus to get the book and bring it back. Really.
Here is the thing: Our selective, nationally ranked universities are not getting rid of their philosophy departments and all of their librarians. The cost-cutting measures we see at WIU and similar institutions imply that only children of privilege deserve librarians, or the humanities, or the arts. That training in information science, critical thinking and creativity properly belongs to those who can afford it. This attitude practically ensures that scientific research and cultural products will predominantly reflect the views and the values of the elite. The kinds of cost-cutting trends exemplified by what just happened at WIU suggests that students attending certain kinds of regional schools should stick to vocational degrees catering to the immediate needs of businesses. — Sherry CM Lindquist, Why It Matters That Western Illinois University Fired All Its Librarians
Public school libraries are not in the clear either. School Library Journal has a piece exploring how the expiration of ESSER funding is leading to school librarian layoffs amid budget shortfalls and cuts. One word of note in this piece is that at least one of these schools–Cypress Fairbanks ISD (Cy-Fair) in Cypress, TX–has also been at the center of controversial right-wing policy implementation for several years. They cut their library staff just in time to also cut entire chapters from science textbooks because the board does not believe in climate change or biology. It’s hard to buy that it’s completely ESSER when ridding the district of information professionals makes the board’s agenda easier. Librarians in the district got their layoff notices via email sent at 11:30 p.m.
The entire library staff was let go at Spring Branch Independent School District (TX), too. That district wasted over $30,000 on a single book ban. Of course it was not the only book challenge in the district, either. Other school library positions were eliminated this year in Franklin County, North Carolina; Des Moines, Iowa; Pasadena, California; Andover, Massachusetts; Medford, Oregon; Fort Worth, Texas (home to book banning measures like this); Ann Arbor, Michigan; and many, many more.
We can’t attribute every funding challenge public libraries are facing this year to book bans, but we certainly should consider it as a real possibility. The public votes pro-library more often than not.* That begs the question of why it is the insignificant budgets of the public library first to be cut when a city faces a shortfall. It continues to weaken one of the strongest democratic institutions in the US and further creates opportunity for the dismantling and destruction so eagerly sought by parties ready to step in and revoke access to whoever they’d like to deny.
Not to mention that public libraries have become the social safety net for the services and institutions already cut from the budgets. Libraries are warming shelters, cooling centers, places for those experiencing houselessness can go, technology spaces, community centers, recreation departments, and more. When you cut the safety net, what happens?**
We’re heading toward a reality where the few systems funded by the people for the people continue to be winnowed. The cost of losing public libraries (and public education, too) is democracy more broadly. The cost is being sentenced to the whims and the desires and the pocketbooks of the few, rather than the voice and the needs and the realities of the many.
Public libraries are being targeted right now again and again and again. They are, without question, on the ballot this year, whether or not there is a specific measure about them.
*Just like they do not believe in banning books, as shown in survey after survey.
**Modern day debtors’ prisons is the answer. Those cost more than the safety nets but the prison industrial complex rolls on, raking in billions of dollars and lining the pockets of thousands of companies annually. The American prison system is also home to the most flagrant violations of First Amendment rights and censorship of those within it.