State librarian seeks funding, Capitol campus return amid budget cuts

This article was first published by TVW.

Washington’s new state librarian wants $4.2 million to stabilize services and restore public access to historic collections while advancing a long-delayed plan to return the State Library and Archives to the Capitol campus.

On Thursday, the Joint State Capitol Committee and Capitol Campus Design Advisory Committee voted to recommend a new library and archives building to the Legislature to be built on the site of the former General Administration building on the campus.

Melody Sky Weaver told Inside Olympia host Austin Jenkins that persistent budget cuts have left the state’s oldest cultural institution struggling to maintain services.

Twelve employees received layoff notices in 2025 after revenue from real estate recording fees fell short of projections. The state library in Tumwater is now open by appointment only, on Thursdays from 1 to 4 p.m.

“The level of access they had before has been crippled by these budget cuts,” Weaver said.

The library’s approximately $12.7 million biennial budget supports historic collections, institutional libraries in prisons and other facilities, and the Washington Talking Book and Braille Library.

Even before Weaver began as state librarian on October 1, she made news by advocating for the return of the library to the Capitol campus, which it left following the 2001 Nisqually earthquake.

The proposed Library and Archives Building (LAB) would replace aging and inadequate facilities with collection storage, exhibition space, meeting rooms and other public amenities.

Weaver sees the project as an opportunity to make the library more accessible to lawmakers, researchers and visitors. A self-described “extroverted loud librarian,” Weaver says advocacy is essential to reversing years of cuts and raising the institution’s profile.

Her larger goal is to make the State Library indispensable, rather than one of Washington’s best-kept secrets. “I feel like libraries are very sexy, but of course I’m biased,” she said.