Federal cuts eliminate key library resources for students, public

For more than two decades, students at Middleboro and Lakeville schools have used academic databases to support their studies — next year, they won’t have access to 75% of them due to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump earlier this spring.

An academic database is a collection of digital resources, often including scholarly articles, journals, research papers and other educational materials. Between July 2024 and March 2025, Middleboro students accessed these databases over 6,800 times for use in essays, projects, test preparation, language learning and other academic pursuits. Lakeville students used the same databases more than 8,100 times during the same period, according to statistics from the Massachusetts Library System.

“How do you actually get peer-reviewed vetted articles that aren’t just off the internet but are quality research materials for the students?” said Middleboro Public Library Director Randy Gagné. “The need for the community, the need for the residents of the commonwealth hasn’t changed, we still have to figure out how to do this.”

In March, the president signed Executive Order 14238, which eliminated the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that provided $3.6 million to Massachusetts libraries last year — roughly two-thirds of which went toward supporting academic databases.

"The federal impact cannot be overstated. In Massachusetts, over 1,600 school, public, academic and special libraries from across the state benefit from federal [Institute of Museum and Library Services] funding,” said Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners Director Maureen Amyot.

The agency’s elimination left the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners with difficult questions: Which academic databases should be eliminated? And how will the ones that remain be funded?

Out of 27 academic databases available last year, only seven will be available to students and library patrons next year. The eliminated databases include the Boston Globe Archive, Transparent Language Online, career and test prep resources and many others.

The library commissioners preserved the most “heavily used” databases — primarily the broader encyclopedias Britannica and Gale.

To pay for the remaining databases, the library commissioners subtracted $500,000 from funding intended for eBooks and added it to the databases portion of the budget. This move will have additional consequences for libraries, said Lakeville Public Library Director Jennifer Jones.

“I can tell you that Lakeville is a heavy user of digital audiobooks, so that’s going to affect them,” she said. “I’m going to have to use more of my budget to cover that.” 

At Middleboro High Schools, Librarian Donna Phillips said struggling students will be significantly impacted.

“I have special education students that I've done very targeted work with [and] we’ll just have to redo those lessons and think of different ways to approach it,” she said.

Phillips added there’s “nothing to fill the gap” for specific databases that provide guided learning assistance to students, such as Transparent Language Online.

The language learning program enabled students studying English or a foreign language to compare their speech with that of a native speaker and offered tools to support their learning — from basic skills like learning the alphabet to advanced, guided modules designed to build fluency.

Language classes aren’t the only place students will be missing resources, Phillips said. Two eliminated databases, Gale in Context: U.S. History and World History, allowed students to “browse topics and get ideas for research,” she said.

“They would be curated resources, so they would be divided into primary sources, audio and academic journals, magazines, books and it was very user friendly,” she said.

In English classes, missing literature databases means greater difficulty in researching titles and authors.

“With my budget I don’t think I’ll be subscribing to any databases for Middleboro. We’ll just have to make do with what’s left,” Phillips said.

For libraries, Jones said the financial problems could compound as other federal cuts, such as those to Medicare and Medicaid, further constrict the state’s budget.

“I think we’re going to end up with a lot of indirect costs, all the federal cuts are going to be cumulative for the state. It’s going to put a strain on what they can give to libraries.”

While Lakeville’s municipal government covers the cost of utilities, materials and salaries, the state and the Friends of the Library support “enhancement” like special programming for seniors and children. If purse-tightening continues, Jones said, it would mean a reduction in programming.

Gagné and Jones both described the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services as a “huge loss,” for its function as a national leader.

“You have this national organization that’s establishing best practices and organizing initiatives across the country,” Gagné said. “If they see, for instance, a certain something that’s working well in one state they can inject grant money to try and encourage it in another state.”

With the institute gone — and the funding and leadership it provided missing — libraries across the country have little recourse to, as Gagné said, “figure out how to do this.”

One strategy involves forming a consortium of libraries to purchase databases at a group rate — something both directors said they are exploring.

At the state level, the Massachusetts attorney general has joined 19 other states in suing the Trump administration over the dismantling of several federal agencies, including the library institute. The suit will likely take years to reach a conclusion; in the meantime, libraries will have to make do.

“The rules of the game have changed, you can sit there and cry about it or you can try and grow and adapt. Will people be hurt in the short term? Yeah it’s going to be a detriment to our services,” said Gagné. “But we’ll do the best we can to adapt as a library and to try to make sure our community is taken care of.”