Courtesy Madison Public Library.
Black and white photo of a staff member answering a phone in front of books.
Madison had a library before it had municipal sewers or electricity. In this photo from 1947 an unnamed staff person answers the phone at the libraray, then on Carroll Street at Dayton Street.
In some ways it’s an awkward time for the Madison Public Library to be celebrating its 150th anniversary. Libraries are facing funding cuts — and cuts for other programs, from social services to the humanities, are creating a domino effect that will also impact libraries.
But still, the milestone is an opportunity to celebrate and highlight what the library provides to the city, says Tana Elias, library director at Madison Public Library. “Having that access to information, that democratic ideal of a public library accessible to all — maybe it is even more important to celebrate it now.”
The sudden shutdown of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the federal agency that awards grants and funding to museums and libraries, sent shockwaves through the world of nonprofits at the end of March. The Trump administration placed all of that agency’s employees on administrative leave and froze all grants. On May 1, a federal judge issued a ruling that temporarily blocks the administration from taking any further actions to “dissolve” the agency.
Compared to other municipalities, says Elias, “Madison is in a pretty good position, because people here like libraries and use them.” Most of its funding — between 68% to 79% — comes from the city. And because the city’s November property tax referendum was approved, funding “should be steady for the next year or two,” Elias says, though she expects smaller “1% to 2% reductions for efficiencies.”
Dane County also kicks in through a reimbursement agreement. If a Madison resident stops in at the Monona or Middleton library and checks out a book, or vice versa, these transactions are reimbursed.
Madison’s libraries are also supported by private funds, raised by the Madison Public Library Foundation and branch library Friends groups and through capital campaigns for projects like the Imagination Center at Reindahl Park.
The Madison Public Library is “better resourced than a small rural library,” says Elias. Those libraries are likely to receive more funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The library did have a federal grant for $240,000 for a special project that is not fully spent. That project wrapped up early, though, when the staff member leading it left for another job. The last payment request sent in, in January, was filled.
In the last 12 to 13 years, the library has received $705,000 in grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Elias says.
Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services impacts Madison in other ways, since it provides funding for the South Central Library System and the state Department of Public Instruction's Division for Libraries and Technology, which provides support to libraries statewide for everything from staff development to database access through BadgerLink. It also provides the software that runs the Outerlibrary Loan service, through which patrons can borrow books from all over the country.
It’s hard to say what would happen if funding for the loan service and the databases dries up permanently. Elias says the library would have to determine “what it would mean to offer [the programs] through the library system. Do we want to reduce other services to fund the database?”
Elias says that DPI and the state library systems have their federal funding through the end of this fiscal year, which ends in June.
But this is the time when Congress usually appropriates funding for the next fiscal year. With no one working at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, no one is creating a budget, Elias notes: “For next fiscal year, July, there is no guarantee that any of that funding will be available.”
At the same time, libraries are “picking up the slack as an institution for other funding that is being cut. If homeless services are being cut, we see the difference here and if other funding to the city is cut, the city has to make that up or decide not to do a service. It’s a complicated thing.”
Even so, Elias thinks it is “important to celebrate that we have had 150 years of public libraries. That tells me it’s important. We had municipal library service before we had municipal sewer and electricity. It was important to our forebears to have access to information, and to make it freely accessible.”
Elias notes that libraries now play a crucial role in making technology available to everyone at a time when people rely on digital communication to interact with government entities and businesses.
“In going through archives, it has been fun to realize how creative librarians have been over time and how responsive to the community they have been, and that is something to celebrate too,” says Elias. “Now funding is threatened, but we have been in similar time periods before, maybe not quite this dire, but we have persevered.”
The anniversary celebration at the Central Library, 201 W. Mifflin St., will take place from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on May 17, with cake, coffee, a slide show of vintage photos, and more. Elias, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Madison Public Library Foundation Executive Director Conor Moran will speak on the theme of the 150th: “Celebrating the Past; Inspiring the Future.”
Branch libraries will also be celebrating, each with something a little different (but all with cake!). On May 10, Ashman, Meadowridge, Sequoya and Goodman South Madison will have their parties; on May 31, it’s Monroe Street, Lakeview, Pinney and Hawthorne. See full details here.
