The campaign to defund and shutter multiple federal agencies is currently taking place in Washington, D.C. Under the guise of efficiency, DOGE has allegedly determined that the mission of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) are both in need of reform and presumably wasteful. Despite both agencies playing a critical and proven role in government investment in culture, heritage, preservation, and education, the current administration has moved rapidly to dismantle Congressionally-authorized services that represent less than 0.0046% (IMLS) and 0.001% (NEH) of the federal budget in any given fiscal year. It seems highly likely that other agencies who provide federal grants to cultural entities may soon share the same fate – the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the National Park Service, to name a few. The loss of these agencies and the program funds they dutifully oversee will disproportionately affect poor, rural, and underrepresented communities; this is devastating news for New Mexico.
Dylan McDonald (right) with student and parents at National History Day, 2022
Over the course of my nearly 25-year career in libraries and archives, I have had the opportunity to work on multiple projects made possible only when leveraging these federal funds. I can verify through experience that these grants are efficient in delivering goods and services to their intended audiences, invite additional funding from other public and private entities, and are exacting in their fiduciary responsibilities. Over the last five years in New Mexico alone, the NEH has supported 52 projects, bringing nearly $10 million in critical cultural funds to the state, while in that same period, IMLS has funded 94 projects, adding an additional $16.7 million in grants and services. Yet, on March 14th, the White House issued an Executive Order calling for the IMLS to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” On April 2nd, Michael McDonald, the acting director of the NEH, informed via email that $500,000 in federal funds previously awarded to New Mexico projects had been cancelled. McDonald noted this termination was “in furtherance of the President’s agenda . . . an urgent priority for the administration” and that it was “necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities.”
New Mexico History Day students
NEH public monies are used to support multiple educational programs for New Mexicans, including the National History Day, a scholastic competition “in which students in grades 6–12 choose a topic and dive deeply into the past by conducting extensive research in libraries, archives, and museums. . . Through this process, students develop skills in communication, project management, and historical thinking.” The event begins in the fall and continues throughout the academic year. This year’s theme of “Rights and Responsibilities” asked the hundreds of participating students throughout the state to examine the complex historical realities of how rights are established and enforced along with the commensurate responsibilities required by these privileges. Most students head directly to their school and community libraries to begin their research. The resulting creative student work brings together parents, teachers, librarians, historians, and community volunteers as they evaluate what the students have learned. This multifaceted program is made possible by the staff of the New Mexico Humanities Council, and despite its many documented success stories – including students from Silver High School placing at nationals, students from Moriarty High School having their project on “Gas Baths and the Bracero Program in New Mexico and Beyond” placed on display at the Palace of the Governors, and a student at Arrowhead Park Early College High School placing first at the state competition – History Day in New Mexico is in jeopardy of folding.
NMSU students Gabriela Gutierrez (left) and Angeles Tena (right) working on the
NEH-funded Amador Family digitization project
Here at the New Mexico State University Library, a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded digitization project moves toward wrapping up its third year. In 2022, NEH awarded the library $345,763 to digitize and provide online access to the complete Amador family correspondence. Digitizing over 15,000 pages of original correspondence from the Amadors, a prominent Mexican-American family on the US-Mexico border during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, will provide researchers with instant access to archival materials documenting regional culture and history. The grant funds allowed the library to hire over a dozen NMSU students who worked to create high-quality digital scans of the letters and then create descriptive information, or metadata, from the correspondence in both English and Spanish. All the digitized materials and extracted information is now searchable in one of the library’s online databases. For their efforts with the Amador papers, the faculty, staff, and students were awarded the 2024 Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists’ Archival Project Award. Without funding from the NEH, it is doubtful the library could have digitized this collection in such a short timeframe.
Fort Bayard (NM) operating room, 1918
The Rio Grande Historical Collections and the Special Collections, two units within the library’s Archives and Special Collections, rely on other grant funds to expand their holdings through the purchasing of materials that document New Mexico. In 1998, the Southwest and Border Cultures Institute (SBCI) was founded at NMSU. Overseeing a $1.8 million permanent endowment, made possible by NEH and private donors, the SBCI yearly awards acquisition grants that impact faculty and graduate student research on Southwestern and US-Mexico Border issues in the humanities. Recent library purchases made possible by these grants include a photo album from a Fort Bayard nurse, c.1910; WWII-era publications from the Deming Army Air Field, including GI: Deming Army Air Field and a yearbook of bombardiers in training; commercial recordings of Apache, Navajo, and Pueblo singers; and sheet music inspired by and about Smokey Bear, Billy the Kid, the Lone Ranger, and the hard-scrabble life of the icon of the American West, the cowboy. These supplemental funds, made possible by NEH, are essential to the acquisition of historical and pop culture items for academic study.
The synergy created throughout New Mexico by the distribution of federal funds through the IMLS and NEH is in danger of going away. The New Mexico Library Association and the New Mexico Humanities Council are urging the public to contact their federal representatives to oppose these cuts. Raúl Torrez, the New Mexico Attorney General, has joined with twenty other AGs in suing the Trump Administration over the shuttering of the IMLS, noting that “The sudden halting of the agencies’ work after decades of close cooperation will immediately put at risk hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding on which the States depend, and undermine library programs, economic opportunity, and the free flow of commerce throughout the country.”
Please consider the essential role libraries play in New Mexico and how you might show your support.