This year’s federal funding for State Library on the way after ‘emotional ride’ for organization

A few months ago, South Dakota State Librarian George Seamon got an invite to a Pizza Ranch lunch with members of the South Dakota Library Association.

The invite had come at a trying time.  

Weeks earlier, former Gov. Kristi Noem had released a budget that would’ve slashed the State Library to a bare-bones operation. Were lawmakers to go along with the cuts, the lion’s share of the services that flow from the State Library to the association’s member libraries — interlibrary loans, summer reading program assistance, professional development and access to dozens of paid database services for use by local patrons border to border — would have disappeared.

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But something else happened between the budget address and the Pizza Ranch meet-up: Seamon’s organization benefited from a groundswell of support. 

Dozens of libraries had shared news stories of the cuts’ potential impact on social media. Librarians had peppered legislators with letters and calls. Members of the public had done the same.

On Thursday, Seamon held back tears recounting to the State Library Board what had happened when he showed up at the restaurant to connect with some of those supporters.

“As soon as I walked in, everybody stood and clapped,” Seamon recalled about the meeting, which took place after the first legislative hearing on State Library funding. “And that wasn’t for me. That was for the State Library.”

By the end of the legislative session, lawmakers had reached a compromise to spare the library. Four employees would depart, and some services would be pared back. The library board — which had its final meeting Thursday in Pierre — would dissolve. But most of the organization’s services would survive.

Joe Graves, secretary for the state’s Department of Education and overseer of the State Library, worked hard to find that compromise, Seamon told the board. Lawmakers stepped in to back Graves’ plan.

There was a sigh of relief in the library community, but it didn’t last.

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The path forward had protected enough state funding to preserve about a million dollars in federal matching funds from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). But shortly after the legislative session’s end, President Trump issued an executive order designed to pare down IMLS to the greatest extent possible under the law.

Congress had authorized funding for IMLS grants, with enough money to extend the grant the State Library expected for this year. But some opponents of the executive order were concerned that staffing cuts at IMLS would make it impossible for the institute to process grant requests.

“We saw that light at the end of the tunnel, then we were let back down,” Seamon said Thursday.

But this week, Seamon got notice that South Dakota’s grant funding was on the way. The librarian told the board that IMLS had released half the money, and asked for documentation of the library’s operational plans to release the other half.

“Based on those assurances, I strongly believe that we will receive the second half of our grant,” Seamons told the board.

It hasn’t been easy to see State Library staff go, Seamon said, but he reported that each staff member has secured new employment. One will work closely with the library, as she’s taken a position with a nonprofit organization that creates summer reading program materials and helps disseminate them, often through state libraries. Another will work for the public library in Pierre. A digitization specialist took a job at a bank. 

One of the State Library’s longer-term employees will retire. 

“I’m jealous, because I’m a lot farther away in life from retirement,” Seamon said.

He didn’t get a standing ovation from the dissolving board of citizen advisers to whom he reported those details, and details on the library’s current culling of its non-fiction collection, much of which will become the property of the State Historical Society. 

Seamon and his organization weren’t spared from gratitude and compliments, though.

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Board President Tom Nelson said the state should’ve thought more carefully before targeting an organization that runs “as quietly and efficiently” as the State Library. Board member Kim Borsch, a 20-year member of the local library board in Lead, thanked Nelson for helping her get onto the state board, then thanked Seamon and the State Library staff for the opportunity to peer under the hood of an organization whose work she admires.

Jane Norling of Beresford, the board’s vice president, lamented the loss of the board and reiterated Nelson’s hope that lawmakers consider renewing a smaller version of it to serve as a voice for rural library patrons.

Seamon thanked the board members for their kind words and reiterated his gratitude to Graves and the other departments that showed support to the State Library through the “emotional ride” of the past five months.

He added, “It’s definitely something I don’t want to go through again.”

The future of the State Library is not assured, however. In 2018, during Trump’s first term in office, Congress authorized grant funding for IMLS through the end of September 2025. Its members will soon need to decide whether to authorize another round of the grant funding that props up state libraries across the U.S.