Alaska librarians hopeful state will restore ‘massive’ cut in vital grant

Alaska librarians are cautiously optimistic that a state agency will restore a big cut in funding for an annual grant that smaller rural libraries depend on. The abrupt reversal of last month’s cutback followed an outcry by librarians and the public.

The director of the state Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums last month told librarians around the state that this year’s Public Library Assistance grants will be $1,829, about 75% smaller than what they’ve been getting for years. That worries the state’s librarians.

“A cut that massive, even though it’s a small grant, does have a pretty big impact on a small library in rural Alaska,” says Theresa Quiner, the director of the Kuskokwim Consortium Library in Bethel. She says smaller libraries depend on the grant to buy books and other materials, and to pay expenses like electricity and heating.

“Yeah, I mean as somebody that runs a library with a really small budget and in rural Alaska, the cut was very alarming,” Quiner said. “And, I can’t even imagine how much of an impact that would have on a really, really small library. Especially libraries that are volunteer-run.”

Soon after the Libraries, Archives and Museums Division announced the cuts on Aug. 16, staff members of smaller libraries scrambled to figure out how they could cut their budgets to absorb that loss of funding. Some faced the possibility of shutting down.

“And so this cut was very unexpected,” she added. “This is a grant that libraries have very reliably anticipated having each year. And so getting the cut midway, part-way through the fiscal year was a shock.”

Quiner says librarians mounted a campaign to get the word out about the cuts. Last week both Division Director Amy Phillips-Chan and Deena Bishop, commissioner of the division’s parent Department of Education and Early Development, sent letters to the librarians and others including leaders of the state House and Senate. In the letters, they said that they would find funding for the full $7,000 grant, and that libraries would get official notice of supplemental grants by Oct. 15.

“We just got that email a couple days ago and so it seems as though the grant funding is being reinstated,” Quiner said. “And I personally am very overjoyed to hear that news.”

Phillips-Chan said in a Monday follow-up email that “A grant payout to a library will be initiated after receiving a signed copy of the grant agreement from the library.”

Quiner, who’s also president-elect of the Alaska Library Association, attributed the state’s turnabout to the outcry raised by the public and her fellow librarians.

“I’m very grateful that so many librarians around the state with so much effort and advocacy for this,” she said Monday. “It just speaks a lot to the power of librarians and their ability to do research and advocate for the work that they do.”

Delta Junction Community Library Director Tiki Levinson says the emails were encouraging. But she’ll maintain a wait-and-see attitude under she gets one of those letters.

“It seems like there’s going to be some movement on this,” she said Monday. “And hopefully this funding will be restored, but it is not a done deal yet.”

If the full grant comes through, Levinson won’t have to make hard decisions on which services to cut back – including children’s programs, like Storytime, that are among the Delta library’s most popular offerings.