Museums seek more funding

Museums seek more funding

There is a disparity between library and museum funding.

COLUMBUS (AP) — For years, federal funding for libraries has far outpaced taxpayer money for history museums, science museums and other institutions that have long been field-trip destinations.

Museums are now calling for a larger sliver of the federal budget, saying the assistance is vital in maintaining one of the most important American places of learning outside the classroom. There are about 122,000 libraries and 25,000 museums in the country.

A few federal lawmakers wrote the director of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, asking her to study how federal money is spent on museums. The institute is the primary federal funding source for museums and libraries.

Libraries receive about $200 million in institute funding while museums are getting roughly $31 million.

The study will be used — along with feedback gathered from a hearing in Columbus on Monday followed by others in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday and Oakland, Calif., on Friday — in potentially changing the way money is doled out beginning in 2009. Any change would need congressional approval.

Congress in 1996 merged two organizations to create the institute, which said it inherited a funding split that saw many more dollars go to libraries than museums. When funding was last reauthorized in 2003, there was no push from museums to get more funding.

“We’re very interested to hear how federal funding has affected programs,” said institute Director Anne-Imelda M. Radice. “We’re very concerned about the small to midsize organization.”

All museums are unified in their pursuit of more federal money, although they say they do not want to cut into library funds. But they are split on how to best apportion those dollars.

Smaller museums, such as the smaller historical museums that can be found virtually anywhere throughout the country, want each state to receive a base amount. They want the rest of the money to be given out based on an index such as population.

Currently, federal funding for museums is given out on a competitive basis.

“We’re in danger of losing a lot of the cultural inheritance of our country if we don’t find a way to protect it and preserve it,” said William Laidlaw, executive director of the Ohio Historical Society. He cited national catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina and the danger they pose to preserving local artifacts such as birth and death certificates.

“This is more about getting us so that we’re doing it in a more strategic and planned way so that we’re working together rather than competing with each other so much,” Laidlaw said.

Larger museums, such as Columbus’ COSI science and technology museum, fear that a population-based funding scheme in the absence of substantially higher funding overall would damage museums that provide the most benefit. Unless funding goes up drastically, they would prefer the competitive system to stay in place.

“I think we all agree that the strengthening of our national fiber is worthy of our federal funding,” said David Chesebrough, president and chief executive of COSI. “Museums can have a positive role in supporting learning in the formal system, and that ever-so-important skill of lifelong learning.”