Institute of Museum and Library Services

Sometimes, it feels like every day I wake up and wonder what new blow the current administration is going to strike against the world today.  Will it be aimed at the environment?  International norms?  Human rights?  The other day, the roulette wheel seems to have landed on... libraries.  Or so it would have seemed to most folks.  From where I was sitting, the stakes were a bit higher and a little more personal.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) was founded in 1996.  It's mission is to provide federal financial support for, you guessed it, museums and libraries - but the definition of the former has been stretched in the past to also include zoos and aquariums, as well as botanical gardens.  Over the past thirty years, many zoos and aquariums have received grants from IMLS to carry out important work.  You might think that, with the name of the organization, grants would mostly go to education programs, but in the past they've also benefit conservation and research programs as well, including studies of the reproductive biology of endangered species.  The agency was one of several which Trump has largely gutted this month through his "Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy" executive order.

Brookfield Zoo, along with six partners, receiving a grant in 2021 to create a centralized database of radiology images, which help vets better understand the health of animals, in zoos and in the wild.

Zoo New England received a grant in 2025 to study the genetic causes of various diseases in animals.

Woodland Park Zoo received a grant in 2020 to help improve education programs for visitors with disabilities and make zoo programing more inclusive (there's one of those words that the new admin hates, being part of that dreaded DEI).

IMLS, in case you were wondering, represents less than 0.005% (or less than one two-hundredth of a percent) of the Federal budget.  When the Trump/Musk cuts first began, and fallout started to become apparent, I told a colleague that, at the very least, when all of the dust settled folks would start to have a better idea of exactly what it is that the Federal government does.  By the time people begin to appreciate that, however, the damage will already have been done, and may not be as easily undone.