At the Moose Pass Public Library, kids were playing in a room lined with bookshelves. Children's toys lay scattered across the floor. This is a typical day for the library, which has become a hub for the Kenai Peninsula community of about 80 people.
It’s one of the roughly 70 libraries in Alaska that participate in a lending program, called the 800# Interlibrary Loan & Reference Backup Service, that primarily serves rural communities. The service stopped taking requests on May 7.
“A lot of people are like, well, that's, you know — it's a big inconvenience,” said Moose Pass Public Library Director Dani Koschak.
Nearly 100 interlibrary loan requests have been filed at the library since last summer. They included children’s science fiction novels like “The Wild Robot,” vehicle repair manuals and an Alaska climbing guide.
“Not everyone can just buy what they want, either, so that's why they rely on libraries,” Koschak said.
The program gave rural residents access to books that smaller, far-flung libraries don’t have the budget or space for. If a request couldn't be satisfied in-state, the title would get pulled from a library in the Lower 48.
But the service could be eliminated entirely if funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services isn’t approved by the end of June. The institute is an independent federal agency that was targeted for cuts through a Trump administration executive order in March entitled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.”
Already, some of the state’s tribal libraries have had to scale back operating hours because of the order. And Alaska isn’t the only state where Trump’s funding cuts have affected library services.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services could not be reached for comment via email.
Sandy Knipmeyer, who runs the rural interlibrary loan service at the Anchorage Public Library, says losing it will be worst for people who live in villages with few library options.
“There is nothing in the state that will step in to provide that,” Knipmeyer said.
Virginia Morgan is library director of the Cooper Landing Community Library, a Kenai Peninsula library housed in a small log cabin without running water. Her library serves about 200 people.
“I don't think we've even started to comprehend how we're going to adapt,” Morgan said. “We are still sort of, like, a little bit shell-shocked at what's happening.”
Janette Cadieux, a patron of the Cooper Landing library, has used the interlibrary loan service several times. She once requested a style manual for a research paper she wrote. She says the title wasn’t available in Cooper Landing.
“If I lived in a large town, I would just go to that big library and get the book, and I would take my laptop in, and day after day, I'd just go in and use that manual and get it done,” Cadieux said. “But that's not really feasible in a little community like Cooper Landing.”
Cadieux says her research paper wouldn’t have been published in an academic journal without the style manual being sent to Cooper Landing through the loan program.
Trump’s executive order could also end the Alaska Library Extension, a service that mails books and DVDs to Alaskans who don’t have a library in their community. It also provides virtual reference services.
The program is funded entirely by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. If federal funding isn’t approved, it will end after June, too.
“Right now, in the absence of funding, there is no alternative,” said Catherine Melville, director of the Juneau Public Libraries. That’s where the program operates.
“There are a lot of areas in Alaska that are off the beaten track and isolated, and this program really provided a connection to the outside world,” Melville said.
Last year, nearly 90 communities without libraries used the Alaska Library Extension. Melville says it's sad to even consider living without the program.
Koschak, the Moose Pass library director, said she hopes the cuts won’t stop people from using rural libraries’ remaining services.
“We do the best that we can,” she said. “But ultimately there will just be more disappointment.”
A federal judge recently ordered the Trump administration to restore Institute of Museum and Library Services funding to 21 states that filed a lawsuit over the executive order. Alaska is not one of those states.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the Director of Juneau Public Libraries, Catherine Melville.
