Eira TanseyThere's some seriously bleak stuff happening in GLAM land right now, folks. I follow this closely because of my interests and also because of my work on the Society of American Archivists council. Here's four stories alone from the last 24 hours demonstrating how seriously scary it is to be an archivist, librarian, curator, and cultural worker right now in the United States in terms of your job security.
Smithsonian undergoing a "content review" https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/smithsonian-to-conduct-wide-content-review-requested-by-trump-94012153?st=aLaDDr&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
One hundred NEH employees laid off https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/10/employee-layoffs-national-endowment-humanities-grants/84124320007/
Georg WamhofIndiana State Library begins mass layoffs https://www.reddit.com/r/Indiana/comments/1l8dc0k/mass_layoffsindiana_state_library/
22 Missouri state librarians and archivists are losing their jobs because of a budget stand off https://missouriindependent.com/2025/06/03/missouri-secretary-of-state-cuts-jobs-as-budget-feud-with-state-senate-escalates/
I had a great conversation with a journalist yesterday about digital preservation and emphasized over and over that we have the technical solutions for digital preservation. The problem is that it requires PEOPLE power. Archives have always been chronically understaffed, and the problem is getting extraordinarily dire. I really don't know how much more bluntly I can put this.
Anyway I talk about this entire conundrum in my publication A Green New Deal for Archives, and Senator Ed Markey has proposed legislation that would address a lot of these issues around the vulnerability of archives, but the problem is we need to pull our country out of this hellscape timeline if we also have any hope of saving our archives and supporting the archivists who perform this vital work of supporting democracy.
Netux@TeamMidwest what does GLAM stand for? Context says librarian, archivist, and museum, but no idea what the g is.
Dusty Attic