“Libraries and museums don’t just preserve and promote our cultural treasures, they also enrich and enlarge our lives. And that’s really one of the most powerful things that you all do each and every day.”
– First Lady Michelle Obama, 2016 National Medal for Museum and Library Service Awards
On September 30, 1996, Congress passed the Museum and Library Services Act of 1996, which created the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) within the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities. Lawmakers at that time saw “great potential in an Institute that is focused on the combined roles that libraries and museums play in our community life.”
IMLS has invited libraries to join them in a kickoff social media celebration today, Thursday, Oct. 6. Feel free to tweet, Facebook, or Instagram anniversary wishes or share ways in which libraries and museums have changed in the last 20 years, and their impacts on people’s lives.
They’ll be using the hashtag #IMLSat20. Tag them at @US_IMLS on Twitter and Instagram or at @USIMLS on Facebook. IMLS staff will be on Facebook live at noon Mountain Time today to kick off the celebration.
Libraries and museums have had meaningful, enduring, and important impacts on American communities, so join IMLS today and over the course of the next year to mark this important occasion publicly.