Vermont Department of Libraries outlines FY26 services, federal grants and capital subawards

Catherine Zellnow, state librarian and commissioner of the Vermont Department of Libraries, told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Feb. 6 that the department’s FY26 request pairs state general funds with federal grant dollars to sustain statewide services and several one-time capital programs.

Zellnow said the department provides statewide digital resources including the Vermont Online Library and a new Udemy offering “with more than 20,000 instructional videos and classes,” and that those shared subscriptions produce cost savings compared with individual libraries contracting separately. “If those resources were not available, each school or academic institution in each public library would need to individually contract for those services,” Zellnow said.

The nut graf: The department’s operating budget request relies on a mix of state and federal funds — Zellnow said roughly 61% general funds and an anticipated 33% from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) — while two one-time federal grant streams will fund capital and connectivity work that do not appear on the department’s regular budget pages.

Zellnow described several regularly funded statewide services: an interlibrary loan courier network that connects 141 libraries and moved “close to 67,000 books” last year; a digital lending platform maintained as a core perpetual collection through the Palace Project app; and a talking-book network that serves blind and print-disabled Vermonters as part of the Library of Congress National Library Service network. She said the department also provides statutory services to incarcerated people in the state correctional facilities and reading materials for patients at state psychiatric facilities and the Vermont veterans’ home.

Zellnow outlined two one-time federal programs not shown in the department’s main budget pages: subawards from the U.S. Treasury’s Capital Projects Fund that were distributed last fall to 14 public libraries to increase high‑speed Internet access, and a planned subaward “later this calendar year” of $10,000,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to repair small rural libraries. Committee members asked for clarification about where those awards appear in state accounting; Zellnow said the capital projects funds are in a separate ARPA-related line and therefore not listed on the operating-budget document the committee was reviewing.

Committee members pressed for detail on revenue sources and variability. Zellnow cautioned that the federal IMLS allotment shown in the FY26 materials is an estimate: “The federal funding for fiscal, the federal funding that we would spend in state fiscal year 2026 is not the actual award amount at this time, so that could change,” she said, noting that Vermont’s most recent grants-to-states allocation (LSTA) in 2024 was $1,244,357.

She also described grant programs the department administers: a $90,000 appropriation supporting the Community Legal Information Program at Vermont Law School, grants that support summer reading programming, and grants to offset local participation in the courier network (the department funds half of one stop on the courier network for eligible libraries that apply).

Committee questions covered where special funds appear in the budget book (Zellnow pointed senators to page 15 for a breakdown of general, special and federal funds) and how vacancy savings and federal multi-year awards affect year-to-year comparisons. Zellnow said the department is working to align federal two‑year performance periods with single fiscal‑year spending so the FY26 numbers better reflect expected costs.

Zellnow closed by reiterating that much of the department’s core operations are sustained by a combination of general and federal funds and that federal awards remain subject to change: “We’re hopeful that that funding will be continued,” she said, “but at this point in time we do not yet have a firm grasp of our allocation.”

The committee did not take formal action during the presentation; members signaled they would follow up with technical questions after the hearing.