Kate McDowell

FYI, I collected links to what the IMLS funds in most of each of the US states and they're in here so you can know on a state and sometimes even local level what is going to be severely impacted very very soon.

MORE: Senators Jack Reed, Lisa Murkowski, Kirsten Gillibrand, & Susan Collins all joined the letter to the interim director of IMLS.

Library advocates are making their voices heard.

Congress is listening.

ALA applauds this bipartisan action. Read our full statement: www.ala.org/news/2025/03...

Tell Congress: Resist Trump and MAGA's Project 2025 every step of the way We will resist Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans every day, starting now. We know what we’re up against. Trump and MAGA Republicans have already shown us their playbook. And Project 2025—their “180-d...

Petitions can't hurt. sign.moveon.org/petitions/te...

Do a dissertation on AI if you must, but don’t come to a storytelling expert and start explaining what you assume data storytelling is without even having read her work. First of a wave of students who believe that because it’s AI, I am going to care? Hope not. And they did not know what “LLM” was…

My friends in the federal government strive against the odds to provide information that is accurate, mostly through libraries as institutions. How about you?

Please contact your Congress people today. Ask them to use every possible means to stop the president from freezing all federal public grants.

You can specifically ask all of them to use every lever, procedural or otherwise, to protest the freezing of funds.

The Fascism Barometer | Podcast and Learning Hub hosted by Ejeris Dixon

Highly recommend this podcast: www.fascismbarometer.org

“The center holds so they say / It never held too well for me / I won't stop short for common ground / That vilifies the trodden down / I won't stop / The center held the bonded slave / For the sake of industry / The center held the bloody hand” —Indigo Girls

Thank you, Anita! This makes 1974 sound like such a different time, but I really appreciate learning more about biblotherapy. Personally, I think I already shape my life around this in some ways! And it is very heartening to read something hopeful in these moments.

National library advocates know what’s going on, book banning and misinformation campaigns are just the start. Sustaining US federal, state, and local library funding will take every citizen speaking up.

We're down to the wire here, but the UW Center for an Informed Public is taking applications for (2) postdoctoral scholars. Review starts very soon. For more info about these positions, including qualifications & instructions for applying:

Read more: lnkd.in/g6q_spek
Job posting: lnkd.in/gJ7x5Zwk

Data storytelling for libraries fuels the functioning of local democracy. If you are in Illinois or Michigan and belong to the state library organizations, there are free talks for you on January 13 and 19th!

Seven students signed up for the library impact stories research opportunity in spring! It will be great to have a team to do more testing and development of the DSTL: Data Storytelling Toolkit for Libraries uiucdstl.wixsite.com/uiucdstl