An executive order written more than 2,600 miles away is hitting home for the La Jolla Historical Society.
A recent order by President Donald Trump called for dismantling “to the maximum extent of the law” the Institute of Museum and Library Services, among other government bodies, The Associated Press reported.
Trump said the order “continues the reduction in the elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary,” according to AP.
The institute, also known as IMLS, is a source of federal funding for museums, libraries and educational institutions through multi-year grants.
For the La Jolla Historical Society, that means $37,000 in grant funding could be at risk.
The nonprofit has received three two-year IMLS grants since 2019 and is currently seven months into its current two-year grant, which is being used to help catalog and digitize its historical collection.
“We have not received direct communication saying [our funding] was eliminated, but we are concerned,” Historical Society Executive Director Lauren Lockhart told the La Jolla Light.
This week, the Historical Society sent a notice to its ers asking for donations to make up the difference if the IMLS funding is no longer available.
“We feel so fortunate to have funding to our historic collection,” Lockhart said. “We had a lot of work to do in of catag and digitizing the items in our archive and made incredible strides because of that . We were able to use that to hire paid interns to work with us to review, properly document and catalog everything in our collection. While we’re still not 100% done, that wouldn’t have been possible without the funds.”
As part of that work, interns identified pieces and ed high-resolution images into the Online Archive of California, where the list is globally accessible.
“That was an important part of the work because those that cannot come to our office can find that list and what we have,” Lockhart said. “We want to share these materials we are entrusted with protecting. This funding helps that work.”
As a second step, the plan is to digitize all the items for the Historical Society website, lajollahistory.org. Thus far, 700 items have been scanned and imaged, Lockhart said, including postcards, documents, objects and photos and transcription and digitization of oral histories that previously were on cassette tapes and other physical media.
Despite the potential loss of the federal funds, Lockhart said the Historical Society is committed to finishing the digitization effort.
“It’s challenging, especially as a small organization, but we’re thinking about how to make sure we continue the work and serve our community,” she said. “That’s what IMLS has empowered us to do.
“We’re going to find a way to move forward [if the funding is no longer available]. We just have such great momentum, we want to continue that. We’ll need to find additional resources to continue this work.”
The Historical Society is the only La Jolla organization that currently receives IMLS grants, though several other San Diego museums also receive them. ♦
