On March 14, 2025 President Trump signed Executive Order 14238 eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) "to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law." IMLS is the single largest source of critical federal funding for libraries. Through IMLS' Grants to States Program, for FY2025 the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) was allocated $3.6 million to support statewide library services and grants to local libraries. In the weeks that followed the executive order, IMLS staff were placed on administrative leave and in the President’s FY2026 budget, IMLS is eliminated (pg. 39 under Small Agency Eliminations).
At the annual Massachusetts Library Association conference, MBLC Director Maureen Amyot addressed the impact of ongoing federal uncertainty caused by the executive order and spoke about the MBLC’s efforts to preserve as many federally funded statewide services as possible. Director Amyot announced the FY2026 plan for statewide research databases, the statewide eBook program, and the Commonwealth Catalog.
"The federal impact cannot be overstated. In Massachusetts, over 1,600 school, public, academic and special libraries from across the state benefit from federal IMLS funding. Millions of people rely on federally funded library services,” she said. "Developing a plan for services in an environment of almost daily federal change has been challenging, but our goal has remained constant: to maintain services that are integral to the functioning of our system and heavily relied on by the people of the Commonwealth."
Starting on July 1, 2025, statewide research database offerings will be significantly reduced. However, the MBLC and the Massachusetts Library System (MLS), which jointly fund databases, will maintain several of the most heavily used. The MBLC spends close to $2.2 million of its federal allocation to fund statewide research databases, an amount that cannot be made up in state funding. For FY2026, the eBook content grant to Networks from MBLC’s state line 9506 will likely be funded at $500,000*, which will allow for $500,000 funding in that line to go towards databases. MLS will increase its support for databases by $18,575 to a total of $670,575. Overall, combined database funding from MBLC and MLS will go from $2.8 million to $1.17 million.
"The President has determined that the Institute of Museum and Library Services is 'unnecessary.' But we know the opposite to be true. We know that welcoming ALL, including diverse voices in our collections, and providing free and equitable access to library services make public libraries the cornerstone of a free democratic society,” said Director Amyot. "Libraries change people’s lives. That’s why these reductions in critical library services hurt. But we’re in this for the long game and in the year ahead we’ll continue to work with local, state and federal partners to stabilize library funding and services."
Databases provide every Massachusetts resident with trustworthy online content covering topics such as science, health, history, biographies and more. Last year, there were over 9 million full text downloads from research databases, an increase of 12% in just one year. Sixty percent of database usage comes from schools. The chart below details which databases will be available as of July 1, 2025.
