Michael S. Rosenwald , The New York Times; Margaret Boden, Philosopher of Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88
"As a philosopher of AI, Professor Boden was often asked if she thought that robots would, or could, take over society.
“The truth is that they certainly won’t want to,” she wrote in Aeon magazine in 2018.
Why? Because robots, unlike humans, don’t care.
“A computer’s ‘goals,’” she wrote, “are empty of feeling.”"
Annelise Levy, Kartikay Mehrotra, Bloomberg Law; Trump, Ex-Copyright Chief Trade Barbs Over Copyright Termination
"The Justice Department urged a federal appeals court to reject former Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter’s bid to regain her position, arguing that President Donald Trump lawfully removed her under his constitutional authority.
The brief filed Friday in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit echoed the government’s arguments throughout this case which contend that the Library of Congress qualifies as an executive branch agency subject to Trump’s removal power."
Theodore Schleifer and Nicholas Kulish, The New York Times; Larry Ellison Wants to Do Good, Do Research and Make a Profit
"Mr. Ellison has rarely engaged with the community of Giving Pledge signers, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. He has cherished his autonomy and does not want to be influenced to support Mr. Gates’s causes, one of the people said, while also sensitive to any idea that he is backing off the pledge.
But the stakes of Mr. Ellison’s message on X are enormous. His fortune is about 10 times what it was when he signed the pledge as the software company he founded, Oracle, rides the artificial intelligence boom. Mr. Ellison controls a staggering 40-plus percent of the company’s stock...
“Oxford, Cambridge and the whole university sector are under pressure to capitalize on intellectual property because of long-running government policy belief that the U.K. has fallen behind economically,” said John Picton, an expert in nonprofit law at the University of Manchester."
, NiemanLab; Japan’s largest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, sues AI startup Perplexity for copyright violations
"The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper by circulation, has sued the generative AI startup Perplexity for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed in Tokyo District Court on August 7, marks the first copyright challenge by a major Japanese news publisher against an AI company.
The filing claims that Perplexity accessed 119,467 articles on Yomiuri’s site between February and June of this year, based on an analysis of its company server logs. Yomiuri alleges the scraping has been used by Perplexity to reproduce the newspaper’s copyrighted articles in responses to user queries without authorization.
In particular, the suit claims Perplexity has violated its “right of reproduction” and its “right to transmit to the public,” two tenets of Japanese law that give copyright holders control over the copying and distribution of their work. The suit seeks nearly $15 million in damages and demands that Perplexity stop reproducing its articles...
Japan’s copyright law allows AI developers to train models on copyrighted material without permission. This leeway is a direct result of a 2018 amendment to Japan’s Copyright Act, meant to encourage AI developmentin the country’s tech sector. The law does not, however, allow for wholesale reproduction of those works, or for AI developers to distribute copies in a way that will “unreasonably prejudice the interests of the copyright owner."
Blake Brittain , Reuters; Judge rejects Anthropic bid to appeal copyright ruling, postpone trial
"A federal judge in California has denied a request from Anthropic to immediately appeal a ruling that could place the artificial intelligence company on the hook for billions of dollars in damages for allegedly pirating authors' copyrighted books.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said on Monday that Anthropic must wait until after a scheduled December jury trial to appeal his decision that the company is not shielded from liability for pirating millions of books to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude."
Graham Bowley Jennifer Schuessler and Robin Pogrebin , The New York Times; White House Announces Comprehensive Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions
[Kip Currier: No museum system is more quintessentially linked to "America's story" than the storied institutions that make up the Smithsonian archipelago. Worryingly, that story is under grave threat of being suppressed and rewritten by a Trumpian tidal wave of revisionism, erasure, and outright censorship of exhibition content.
Cultural heritage institutions -- and all Americans -- must unite in standing up against the risks to our collective history stemming from Trump's August 12, 2025 letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III asserting his intent to replace "divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.”
Hands Off Our History!]
[Excerpt]
"The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it would begin a wide-ranging review of current and planned exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution, scouring wall text, websites and social media “to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals.”
White House officials announced the review in a letter sent to Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian. Museums will be required to adjust any content that the administration finds problematic within 120 days, the letter said, “replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.”
The review, which will begin with eight of the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, is the latest attempt by President Trump to try to impose his will on the Smithsonian, which has traditionally operated as an independent institution that regards itself outside the purview of the executive branch...
Mr. Trump’s focus on the Smithsonian began in March, when he issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” In it, he claimed that the Smithsonian, in particular, had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” and that it promoted “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” Last month, bills were introduced in the House and Senate that would codify the executive order into law."
PATRICK VARINE , Trib Live; 97 years ago today, Disney copyrighted the Mickey Mouse character
"On Aug. 12, 1928, an ambitious young man named Walt Disney filed a copyright application for Mickey Mouse, a new animated character he’d created alongside animator Ub Iwerks.
That turned out to be a successful business move for Disney, who would go on to build his character into an international entertainment empire."
Garrett M. Graff , The New York Times; Trump Is Squandering the Greatest Gift of the Manhattan Project
"The Manhattan Project was a towering achievement, one of the great stories of human effort and accomplishment. Yet the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling the culture of research that the Manhattan Project and World War II bequeathed us, a culture that propelled American prosperity.
At no other time in modern history has a country so thoroughly turned its back on its core national strengths. The very elements that made the Manhattan Project such a success are today under assault. With devastating cuts to science and health research, the administration is turning its back on a history of being powered and renewed by the innovation and vision of immigrants. What America may find is that we have squandered the greatest gift of the Manhattan Project — which, in the end, wasn’t the bomb but a new way of looking at how science and government can work together."
Michael Levenson , The New York Times; Adidas Apologizes After Mexico Criticizes Oaxacan-Inspired Shoe
"President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico displayed an image of a pair of Adidas Oaxaca Slip-Ons at a news conference on Friday and said that Adidas and other companies were “usurping the creativity” of Indigenous communities.
She said that the government of Oaxaca had begun talks with Adidas aimed at reimbursing Indigenous communities for the use of their “collective intellectual property” and that Mexico was prepared to take legal action.
Mr. Chavarria, the son of an Irish American mother and a Mexican American father, issued an apology on Saturday, written in English and Spanish and addressed to “the people of Oaxaca.”"
United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ; Invention-Con 2025: Empowering American ingenuity and innovation
"Do you want to grow your intellectual property (IP) knowledge and gain access to IP and business experts, accomplished innovators, and inspiring entrepreneurs? Join us for the USPTO's free flagship conference for inventors, makers, and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss Invention-Con 2025, coming to you virtually September 9-10 from 1:00 – 3:30 p.m. ET daily. Tailored for the independent inventor and entrepreneur community, our marquee event brings inspiration and IP experts directly to you.
Learn from accomplished innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs, and business owners how to use IP to achieve success.
Discover resources available to assist at every stage of your journey.
Connect with IP and business experts who can help you develop a strategy for your innovation, from idea to market."
Priya Bharadia , The Guardian; Cat soap operas and babies trapped in space: the ‘AI slop’ taking over YouTube
"One expert said AI video generators herald the next wave of internet “enshittification”, a term first used by the British-Canadian author Cory Doctorow. Coined in 2022, Doctorow used it to describe the decline in quality of users’ online experiences, as platforms prioritise profit over offering high-quality content.
“AI slop is flooding the internet with content that essentially is garbage,” said Dr Akhil Bhardwaj, an associate professor at the University of Bath’s school of management. “This enshittification is ruining online communities on Pinterest, competing for revenue with artists on Spotify and flooding YouTube with poor quality content.”
“One way for social media companies to regulate AI slop is to ensure that it cannot be monetised, thus stripping away the incentive for generating it.”
Ryan Broderick, the author of the popular Garbage Day newsletter on internet culture, is scathing about the impact of AI video, writing last week that YouTube has become a “dumping ground for disturbing, soulless AI shorts”.
Chloe Veltman, NPR ; Boston Public Library aims to increase access to a vast historic archive using AI
"Boston Public Library, one of the oldest and largest public library systems in the country, is launching a project this summer with OpenAI and Harvard Law School to make its trove of historically significant government documents more accessible to the public.
The documents date back to the early 1800s and include oral histories, congressional reports and surveys of different industries and communities...
Currently, members of the public who want to access these documents must show up in person. The project will enhance the metadata of each document and will enable users to search and cross-reference entire texts from anywhere in the world.
Chapel said Boston Public Library plans to digitize 5,000 documents by the end of the year, and if all goes well, grow the project from there...
Harvard University said it could help. Researchers at the Harvard Law School Library's Institutional Data Initiative are working with libraries, museums and archives on a number of fronts, including training new AI models to help libraries enhance the searchability of their collections.
AI companies help fund these efforts, and in return get to train their large language models on high-quality materials that are out of copyright and therefore less likely to lead to lawsuits. (Microsoft and OpenAI are among the many AI players targeted by recent copyright infringement lawsuits, in which plaintiffs such as authors claim the companies stole their works without permission.)"
JUAN PEREZ JR., Politico; Trump threatens Harvard patents worth hundreds of millions
[Kip Currier: Trump's unsubstantiated and unwarranted threats to seize Harvard's patents look like another tactic out of Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban's road-to-authoritarianism break-the-universities playbook.
Stand tough, Harvard!]
[Excerpt]
"The Trump administration is threatening the status of Harvard University’s lucrative patents as it continues to engage in hardball negotiations with the Ivy League school.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick declared Friday that the administration is launching an immediate review of the intellectual property Harvard has derived from federally funded research grants, in what amounts to yet another display of White House power over higher education institutions...
The university defended its research enterprise and denounced the Trump administration’s tactic on Friday.
“This unprecedented action is yet another retaliatory effort targeting Harvard for defending its rights and freedom,” a university spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO.
“We are fully committed to complying with the Bayh-Dole Act and ensuring that the public is able to access and benefit from the many innovations that arise out of federally funded research at Harvard.”
Ariel Zilber, New York Post ; News Corp CEO Robert Thomson slams AI firms for stealing copyrighted material like Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’
"The media executive said the voracious appetite of the AI firms to train their bots on proprietary content without paying for it risks eroding America’s edge over rival nations.
“Much is made of the competition with China, but America’s advantage is ingenuity and creativity, not bits and bytes, not watts but wit,” he said.
“To undermine that comparative advantage by stripping away IP rights is to vandalize our virtuosity.”"
ASHLEY BELANGER, Ars Technica ; AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified
"AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.
Last week, Anthropic petitioned to appeal the class certification, urging the court to weigh questions that the district court judge, William Alsup, seemingly did not. Alsup allegedly failed to conduct a "rigorous analysis" of the potential class and instead based his judgment on his "50 years" of experience, Anthropic said.
If the appeals court denies the petition, Anthropic argued, the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" based on a class certification rushed at "warp speed" that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine.
Confronted with such extreme potential damages, Anthropic may lose its rights to raise valid defenses of its AI training, deciding it would be more prudent to settle, the company argued. And that could set an alarming precedent, considering all the other lawsuits generative AI (GenAI) companies face over training on copyrighted materials, Anthropic argued."
Chantel Tattoli, The New York Times ; Sued for Playing With Toys?
"When Paul Welander, a health care worker in Britain, heard about a lawsuit that the maker of Calico Critters toys recently filed against a social media content creator, he wasn’t totally surprised.
The critters, introduced in 1985, are tiny velvety-bodied animals — rabbits, mice, moles, bears, beavers, badgers, pigs, penguins — dressed in modest clothes and sold in sets as families.
The lawsuit alleges that the creator committed copyright and trademark infringement by making videos that portray the twee toys in scandalous situations: having affairs, driving drunk, taking drugs. Videos not unlike the crassly captioned pictures of the toys, also known as Sylvanians, that Mr. Welander, 51, started sharing on social media back in 2016."
Nature; We need a new ethics for a world of AI agents
"Artificial intelligence (AI) developers are shifting their focus to building agents that can operate independently, with little human intervention. To be an agent is to have the ability to perceive and act on an environment in a goal-directed and autonomous way1. For example, a digital agent could be programmed to browse the web and make online purchases on behalf of a user — comparing prices, selecting items and completing checkouts. A robot with arms could be an agent if it could pick up objects, open doors or assemble parts without being told how to do each step...
The rise of more-capable AI agents is likely to have far-reaching political, economic and social consequences. On the positive side, they could unlock economic value: the consultancy McKinsey forecasts an annual windfall from generative AI of US$2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion globally, once AI agents are widely deployed (see go.nature.com/4qeqemh). They might also serve as powerful research assistants and accelerate scientific discovery.
But AI agents also introduce risks. People need to know who is responsible for agents operating ‘in the wild’, and what happens if they make mistakes. For example, in November 2022 , an Air Canada chatbot mistakenly decided to offer a customer a discounted bereavement fare, leading to a legal dispute over whether the airline was bound by the promise. In February 2024, a tribunal ruled that it was — highlighting the liabilities that corporations could experience when handing over tasks to AI agents, and the growing need for clear rules around AI responsibility.
Here, we argue for greater engagement by scientists, scholars, engineers and policymakers with the implications of a world increasingly populated by AI agents. We explore key challenges that must be addressed to ensure that interactions between humans and agents — and among agents themselves — remain broadly beneficial."
James Michael Miller, ABA Litigation Section; Robot Art Riles Artists
"Visual artists have survived a motion to dismiss their class claims brought against generative artificial intelligence (AI) companies related to the companies’ use of the artists’ visual works without consent. The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants’ text-to-image AI products were trained in part on their copyrighted works. ABA Litigation Section leaders agree that the case sets up a showdown between copyright interests and the “democratization” of art through AI."
ROBBIE SEQUEIRA | STATELINE , Iowa Capital Dispatch ; Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year
"State lawmakers across the country filed more bills to restrict or protect libraries and readers in the first half of this year than last year, a new report found.
The split fell largely along geographic lines, according to the report from EveryLibrary, a group that advocates against book bans and censorship...
The geographic split among these policies is stark.
In Southern and Plains states, new laws increasingly criminalize certain actions of librarians, restrict access to materials about gender and race, and transfer decision-making power to politically appointed boards or parent-led councils.
Texas alone passed a trio of sweeping laws stripping educators of certain legal protections when providing potentially obscene materials; banning public funding for instructional materials containing obscene content; and giving parents more authority over student reading choices and new library additions.
In contrast, several Northeastern states have passed legislation protections for libraries and librarians and anti-censorship laws.
New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut have each enacted “freedom to read” or other laws that codify protections against ideological censorship in libraries."
Charlie English , The New York Times; ‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has
[Kip Currier: It's incredibly heartening -- and disheartening at the same time -- to read about post-WWII "CIA Book Program" efforts to provide Soviet-propagandized citizens with access to books, ideas, and information (e.g. George Orwell's "1984"), but then reflect on book banning efforts in American libraries and censorship and erasure of information in museums like the Smithsonian right now.]
[Excerpt]
"There are myriad reasons the Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1989. The economic stagnation of the East and the war in Afghanistan are two of the most commonly cited. But literature also played its part, thanks to a long-running U.S. operation conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency that covertly moved millions of books through the Iron Curtain in a bid to undermine Communist Party censorship.
While it is hard to quantify the program’s effect in absolute terms, its history offers valuable lessons for today, not least since some of the very same titles and authors the C.I.A. sent East during the Cold War — including “1984”— are now deemed objectionable by a network of conservative groups across the United States.
First published in English in 1949, Orwell’s novel describes the dystopian world of Oceania, a totalitarian state where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works in a huge government department called the Ministry of Truth. The ministry is ironically named: Its role is not to safeguard the truth but to destroy it, to edit history to fit the present needs of the party and its leader, Big Brother, since, as the slogan runs, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
In the real Soviet system, every country had its equivalent of the Ministry of Truth, modeled on the Moscow template. In Poland, the largest Eastern European nation outside the Soviet Union, this censorship and propaganda apparatus was called the Main Office for the Control of Presentations and Public Performances, and its headquarters occupied most of a city block in downtown Warsaw.
From art to advertising, television to theater, the Main Office reached into all aspects of Polish life. It had employees in every TV and radio station, every film studio and every publishing house. Every typewriter in Poland had to be registered, access to every photocopier was restricted, and a permit was needed even to buy a ream of paper. Books that did not conform to the censor’s rules were pulped.
The result was intellectual stultification, what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz called a logocracy, a society where words and language were manipulated to fit the propaganda needs of the regime...
Troublesome people, inconvenient facts and awkward areas of journalistic inquiry were removed from public life...
Orwell was made a “nonperson” in the Soviet Union, after the publication of his satire of the Russian Revolution, “Animal Farm,” in 1945. It was dangerous even to mention the author’s name in print there, and when “1984” was published it was banned in the Eastern Bloc in all languages. But when copies of the novel did slip through the Iron Curtain, they had enormous power. The book was “difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess,” Milosz wrote, but Orwell — who had never visited Eastern Europe — fascinated people there because of “his insight into details they know well.”
What some Eastern European readers of contraband copies of “1984” suspected, but very few knew for sure, was that these and millions of other uncensored texts were not reaching them entirely by chance, but were part of a decades-long U.S. intelligence operation called the “C.I.A. book program,” based for much of its existence in the nondescript office building at 475 Park Avenue South in Midtown Manhattan. There, a small team of C.I.A. employees organized the infiltration of 10 million books and periodicals into the Eastern Bloc, sending literature by every imaginable means: in trucks fitted with secret compartments, on yachts that traversed the stormy Baltic, in the mail, or slipped into the luggage of countless travelers from Eastern Europe who dropped in at C.I.A. distribution hubs in the West."
Khalil Maycock , News4Jax; Jacksonville man files trademark for name ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ says it’s a way to fight against ‘hate merch’
"A Jacksonville man filed a trademark Class 28 for the name “Alligator Alcatraz.”
A Class 28 trademark means, if approved, Eric Battle would have the rights to that name for games, toys and novelty items.
This comes after Battle said he felt helpless when he saw the controversial immigration detention center, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” opened at an isolated airstrip in the Florida Everglades earlier this month.
State and federal officials have touted the detention center on social media and conservative airwaves, sharing a meme of a compound ringed with barbed wire and “guarded” by alligators wearing hats labeled “ICE” for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Republican Party of Florida has taken to fundraising off the detention center, selling branded T-shirts and beer koozies emblazoned with the facility’s name."
George Gene Gustines, The New York Times; Superman’s Earthly Birthplace? It’s Cleveland, and It’s Embracing Its Hero.
"In a 2007 article, Sangiacomo asked, “Isn’t it time Cleveland embraced its most famous son?” That article then led to the formation of the Siegel and Shuster Society, a nonprofit that is now spearheading the construction of the Superman memorial. (Sangiacomo is a founding board member and the vice president of the society.)...
The Siegel & Shuster Superman Plaza will sit at the city’s Huntington Convention Center and include statues of Superman in midflight, of Siegel and Shuster, and of Siegel’s wife, Joanne, the original model for Lois Lane...
For Siegel and Shuster, it was a long journey to publication after they created their superhero. They pitched Superman to many publishers before National Comics Publications, the forerunner of DC Comics, took a chance on him in 1938. Having no clue how successful the character would become, the pair sold the rights to their creation for just $130 (around $3,000 in today’s dollars). When they later tried to renegotiate, DC Comics stripped them of credit and denied them further work. Siegel eventually became a typist in Los Angeles and Shuster a messenger in Manhattan. It was not until the 1970s that a publicity campaign brought them recognition and a substantial annuity...
Justin M. Bibb, the mayor of Cleveland, said in an interview that he understood why Superman resonates today in these “chaotic and challenging times.”
“People want to feel good about being better neighbors to one another,” he said. “And so, hopefully, this film inspires us all to be our own version of our best selves.”"
Arvin Patel, , Forbes; The AI Patent Revolution: Why Young Professionals Should Think Like Inventors
"While headlines warn of artificial intelligence replacing millions of jobs, they overlook a fundamental shift occurring right under our noses: The surge in AI innovation is generating unprecedented demand at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Major corporations are also actively seeking employees who understand both AI capabilities and intellectual property strategy. These aren't jobs that AI will replace—they're jobs that exist because of AI."
Quinn Wilson, Bloomberg Law; Trump’s Ex-Copyright Chief Loses Bid to Regain Her Old Job
"Former Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter couldn’t convince a district court to reinstate her to her post.
Perlmutter failed to show
Michael S. Levine, Geoffrey B. Fehling, Armin Ghiam, Madalyn "Mady" Moore of Hunton Andrews Kurth - Publications, The National Law Review; Insuring Intellectual Property – Examining AI and Fair Use
"The frequency of lawsuits involving the development and deployment of AI technologies is increasing by the day. Recent lawsuits seeking to hold companies directly and secondarily liable for “joint enterprises” based on use (or alleged misuse) of copyrighted works for training AI models serve as important reminders about the protections that intellectual property (IP) insurance can offer to cover the risks associated with copyright infringement claims.
Recently, a California federal district court ruled that it was “fair use” for an AI software company to use copyrighted books to train its large language models (LLMs). However, the court also found the company’s unauthorized possession of over seven million pirated books that it downloaded from the internet (apparently for free) amounted to copyright infringement independent from whether the books were ultimately used to train the LLMs. In contrast, where the company purchased books before scanning them into digital files, the use was a permissible “fair use.”
The court’s order in Bartz et al. v. Anthropic PBC, No. 3:24-cv-05417 (N.D. Cal. June 23, 2025), highlights the nuanced permissible use of copyrighted training data and underscores why policyholders engaged in the use of copyrighted material should acquire and maintain robust IP insurance that will reliably respond to claims of alleged infringement."
Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter; European Creators Slam AI Act Implementation, Warn Copyright Protections Are Failing
"The coalition is asking for the European Commission to revisit its implementation of the AI Act to ensure the law ” lives up to its promise to safeguard European intellectual property rights in the age of generative AI.”
Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAY ; E-books are on the line as Congress considers future of library funding
[Kip Currier: Why is it okay for Trump and members of the GOP to secretly fund nearly a billion dollars to retrofit a Qatari plane, but it's not okay with them for public libraries to continue to receive IMLS grants that provide access to books, summer reading programs, and services that promote literacy and educated work forces?
There's something fundamentally unethical -- and adverse to the common good -- about supporting measures that give billionaires more and more money, while cutting funds to museums and libraries that improve the lives of millions of Americans every day.
If you care about reading, education, libraries, and museums, let your legislators know NOW!]
[Excerpt]
"States' libraries to lose as much as half their funding
The Institute for Museum and Library Services, a tiny, little-known federal agency, provides grants to states that account for 30% to 50% of state library budgets, according to the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies.
For decades it has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in congressionally approved funds through grants to state libraries in all 50 states and Washington, DC, and to library, museum and archives programs. It serves 35,000 museums and 123,000 libraries across the country, according to its website.
The impact of losing the money will be different in each state because each spends its portion of the funding differently.
Some will have to fire staff and end tutoring and summer reading programs. Others will cut access to electronic databases, end intra-library loans or reduce access to books for the deaf and blind. Many will have to stop providing internet service for rural libraries or e-book access statewide.
With the expectation that Congress won't buck Trump and fund the museum and library services institute, the future of these backbone "compassionate" library services is now under discussion across the nation, said John Chrastka, founder of EveryLibrary, a nonprofit that organizes grassroot campaigns for library funding and blocking book bans."
