TIME – Graham is a historian and professor at Stony Brook University. – Her latest book is BOOK AND DAGGER: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II: “2024 has seen many devastating budget cuts to libraries. Earlier this year, New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams proposed to cut more than $58 million from the city’s libraries. (After public protests, Adams walked back his statement and the city’s libraries were spared—for now.) The National Archives and Records Administration has its slimmest budget in nearly three decades, relative to its holdings. The American Library Association recently wrote to its members, “Every librarian knows that funding is under threat for libraries in communities of all sizes and all across the nation.” The fact is that the health of the nation’s libraries is a national security issue. We learned this lesson once, and profoundly, during World War II. The story of how underinvesting in our libraries almost lost us the war is worth retelling—especially because what we’re losing by cutting back on acquisitions—or, worse, digitizing and then throwing out archives—is exactly what we had to send spies to acquire overseas during that war…”