and National Endowment for the Humanities funding for historic buildings. The biggest source of federal funding for libraries — the Institute of Museum and Library Services— provides grants for library programs and services but not for building construction or repairs. Marroni said libraries can also seek state, territorial or tribal funding and money from nonprofits and foundations that specialize in cultural institutions. For the most part, larger cities are aware of the issues with their library facilities, Marroni said. “But we did hear in many cases that smaller and medium-sized municipalities didn’t have a detailed account of the state of their library building because the people working there aren’t facilities managers — they’re librarians,” he said. “We heard anecdotally from smaller and medium-size libraries that they are more or less able to get by, but when something does break, that becomes a large issue because they don’t have the budget” to fix it. Although the large majority of libraries rely on local funding for maintenance and repairs, some federal financing is available, the report notes, including money from the American Rescue Plan Act, a U.S. Department of Agriculture program for rural libraries 12 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 13, ISSUE 02
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