2025 Government Shutdown and Impact on the Law Library of Congress

Supervisor: Jennifer Gonzalez

October 8, 2025, 3:00pm - 7:30pm and October 13, 3:00pm - 7:30pm

During these hours of my internship, I completed similar tasks to ones I have previously mentioned in other work recap blogs. In this post, I will discuss what I have learned about legal librarianship as it pertains to the 2025 government shutdown. Up until this point in my educational and professional life, I obviously have kept up with the news and current policies, but as I have entered into the public sector, I have much more closely read and stayed informed on current happenings of the U.S. government. Over the last couple of weeks, the government shutdown has impacted my internship with the Law Library of Congress. To break it down a bit, the library itself is funded by the government and relies on the government's ability to stay open, for the library and its staff to also be allowed to work. This means that I have no access to communication with my supervisor and also the law library of congress is not allowed to host the twice-a-week educational webinars for its interns. However, interns and my intern managers are still able to work because we work on a volunteer basis.

An image I found from the current government shutdown that has affected the Law Library of Congress and it's operations.

This has made it difficult for me to really take advantage of all this internship has to offer. As I currently write this post, it is seeming to be that the shutdown will continue longer than previously expected. It is a real struggle, to know that this is a reality of librarians working in the public sector and has such a large effect on so many people groups. Up until this point, I naively thought something like this would never really affect me. Oh, how wrong I was! This experience has shown a light on just how much work librarians do and just how much American citizens rely on our government to continue working. I have so much empathy for the hundreds of effected workers and the interns here who are missing pivotal experiences in their internship experience. I can only hope that this issue is resolved as quickly as possible for first the staff of the library itself and then for the intern and volunteer workers who are here to learn and absorb as much information as possible.