Beth Anderson, director of the Burnsville Public Library in West Virginia, can throw a rock from the library’s front door and just about hit the interstate. While the mountainous region has historically been sparsely settled farm and coal country, Burnsville’s proximity to I-79 ensures that the library is a frequent stop for people just passing through.

Burnsville has a population of about 300, and its school district is the biggest employer in Braxton County. Over the summer, there are approximately two restaurants, and in the winter, none. In addition to the school and library, Burnsville has a few churches, mechanic shops, and a Dollar General. “That’s about it,” Anderson said.

That leaves the public library as Burnsville’s primary community meeting space, entertainment venue, and adult learning facility. It’s also the only place that can print anything in a 15–20 mile radius, and the only spot in town with free Wi-Fi.

It’s a winning bet to say that from Florida to Wyoming, other rural libraries in red states look very similar to the one in Burnsville. They know how to work with very little and maximize what they’ve got. But it’s that very resourcefulness that is making the cuts or freezes—depending on who you ask—at the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services so challenging for these communities.

The majority of the staff at IMLS, the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, was put on administrative leave after a March 14 executive order signed by President Donald Trump called for the elimination of the agency “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Shortly after, grants for public libraries across the country—taken from a total IMLS budget of $294 million for fiscal year 2024—were canceled or frozen.

With multiple lawsuits ongoing, the situation is now in the hands of the judiciary. Meanwhile, the fiscal year isn’t over, and rural libraries are caught in the crosshairs of bills they cannot afford to pay on their own.

In Burnsville, the library’s annual budget is about $48,000. The majority of that funding goes toward paying staff, which costs $29,000 yearly. IMLS supports the library by paying for the internet, its integrated library system (ILS), electronic databases, e-book resources including OverDrive’s Libby app, and a summer reading program. The bills don’t come to the library itself, but are funneled down through the state library system.

At this point, Anderson doesn’t even know how much she may be on the hook for. “I estimate that all of that would be between $6,000 and $8,000, ballpark, on top of regular expenses,” she said. But what keeps her up at night is having to pay out of pocket for the ILS, because the library cannot function without it.

For Tyler Hahn, director of the Cherokee Public Library in Iowa, the big question mark without IMLS support isn’t funding the ILS; it’s keeping the incredibly popular interlibrary loan (ILL) system throughout Iowa’s 500 state libraries afloat.

“I wholly fear what will happen if we don’t have access to ILL,” Hahn said. “My postage budget right now is $700 per year. Calculating ILLs last year, that would have cost us over $6,000 to mail out. That’s half as much as my book budget, just mailing people resources for a couple of weeks here and there.”

Cherokee is another agricultural town, with about 5,200 residents. The library budget is a bit over $250,000 annually, and most funding comes from the municipality. But some of the IMLS funding that Cherokee has received benefits social infrastructure even beyond the library. A recent IMLS grant received by the Cherokee library, for instance, funded analysis of the availability of day care in the larger community. A study of youth visits to the library found more than 700 missing local day care slots—which explained, Hahn said, why so many children spend time at the library after school while they wait for their parents to finish their workdays.

In Pottsboro, Tex., home to about 2,800 people, the city’s most recent annual operating budget was $271,000, according to Pottsboro Library development director Dianne Connery. Of that budget, 6% (just over $16,000) came from federal funding via IMLS, while another 15% (about $36,000) came from the municipal government. Grants from such entities as AARP, Google, the National Institute of Health, and the National Science Foundation made up the difference.

While most of Pottsboro’s budget is from external funding, Connery said that IMLS grants are integral to the successful implementation of all of those funding opportunities, regardless of their sources. “Grants pay for things, not people,” she explained. “That’s what makes IMLS different: it pays for people to run these programs.”

Pottsboro has made waves in recent years with tech access and literacy programming. In 2023, the library debuted a pilot telehealth
program with a cordoned-off, reservable booth for people to use for medical appointments, avoiding long drives to see doctors.
That same year, Connery even scored a $550,000 grant through the federal Emergency Connectivity Fund to install internet in 500 local homes, leaving the town with a number of publicly accessible hotspots.

With federal funding drying up or being cut off entirely, Connery is readying for the worst. She is currently preparing a grant proposal for a Dallas-based foundation that requires matching funding, and was planning to list an IMLS grant as a sub-awardee as proof that she has those funds. Now, the strategy may not work.

Connery has been in touch with Pottsboro’s Congressman, Republican Pat Fallon, and visited him in Washington, D.C., last year to advocate for the town’s library. They have a good working relationship, she said, and Fallon frequently signs letters of support for Connery’s grants. After some push and pull, his office helped prompt the state library to repay Pottsboro $7,500 that it was on the hook for due to an IMLS grant that the agency refused to repay this spring.

Still, the situation in Washington has changed how Connery thinks about these relationships. “The big picture,” she said, “is that we cannot trust the federal government.”

Anderson, Connery, and Hahn all describe their communities as very conservative. But on the whole, the librarians believe that locals in their overwhelmingly red communities don’t realize how significant a role federal funding plays in their day-to-day lives.

“People feel like what happens in Washington is far removed from Cherokee,” Hahn said, characterizing his community as overwhelmingly supportive of its library. Which makes it all the more tragic that both Hahn and Anderson predict their libraries will have to limit their hours open to the public should IMLS funding be permanently phased out.

“People don’t understand what all of this means, ” Connery said. “They think it’s going to affect somebody else, somewhere else. In the end, it is against their best interest, and I don’t think that is what they intended.”

As many Americans do, Connery supports the idea of eliminating wasteful spending in the federal government. But she sees the method taken so far by the Trump administration—including cutting entire departments and programs practically overnight—as controversial at best and reckless at worst. “To go in and slash whole agencies without understanding what they do will be much more expensive for the country in the long run.”