Contribute
How to contribute
The Library grows through readers, contributors, and curators.
This is a delightfully non-partisan issue. It doesn't matter what party you're in, or if you're an independent, you still love your children, your grandchildren, and the other children that are all going to grow up, be workers, and be paying your social security.
— Margaret Bird, video transcript on file (August 2025).
What the Library is
America's School Trust Library is a public reference library for the trust lands
and trust funds the United States set aside for public schools — beginning with
Section 16 of every township in 1785, expanded over two and a half centuries,
and now scattered across the records of fifty state agencies. The Library is
the institution that makes that record findable. For the longer entry-door
read, see Why this matters.
The watchdog citizen
What contributors are actually doing
The Library exists for a constituency that does not yet know it is one. As
Margaret Bird puts it: Most people don’t realize they
are the beneficiaries of this trust.
The school-trust corpus was set
aside in 1785 for the schoolchildren of the Republic in perpetuity, and
that beneficiary class — every public-school child in every land-grant
state, plus the watchdog citizens, school-board members, journalists,
and lawyers who hold the trust on their behalf — has rarely been told.
Telling them, and helping them act, is what the seven roles below are for.
Margaret’s second line names what the act looks like: A
regular citizen can be a watchdog. … When parents and citizens speak up,
the legislators listen.
The Library’s job is to make speaking up
cheap, accurate, and durable. The contributor’s job — whether you arrive
as a watchdog citizen, a school-board member, a journalist, or a
lawyer — is to speak up.
Margaret Bird, video transcripts on file with the Library (held in the
editorial substrate — see How
this works · Substrate — 2025–2026). The transcripts are being
prepared for public release as one of the open Library missions.
Most actively recruited role
Title Steward
A community curator who has institutional access to a specific in-copyright
reference work in the Scholarship section, and who refines the Library's stub
summary into something authoritative. Renewable annually. Bounded — a few
hours a year per title. Open titles include Bogert's Law of Trusts and
Trustees, the Restatement (Third) of Trusts, the NEFA
Funding Public Schools in the United States and Indian Country (2024),
Souder & Fairfax 1996, and Culp et al. 2006.
See open titles →
First step
Get a Library Card
The simplest first step is a free Library Card — email, state, role, and one
line about what brought you here. After that, the easiest contribution is a
correction: read a source page, find an error, submit it. Accepted corrections
produce named or pseudonymous credit on the source page.
Get a Library Card
(placeholder during signup-form bring-up; emails go to library staff)
Build the Library
From contributor to librarian
The Library's people ladder is now explicit: Library Card holder,
Contributor, named librarian. Named librarians hold bounded offices such
as legal reference, state collections, corrections, cataloging, and future
science review.
Read the Librarian Corps program · Legal on-ramp for lawyers
The roles we offer
Seven roles, ordered from lightest to heaviest commitment. Each role answers
four questions: what public office you are occupying, what the smallest useful
act is, what artifact you will leave behind, and what standing the Library
confers in return. Named or, where role conflicts require it, pseudonymous.
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No signup required
Reader
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Public office
- An ordinary citizen using a public reference library. Margaret's line — “Most people don’t realize they are the beneficiaries of this trust” — applies most directly here. As a reader you are exercising the most basic civic standing: knowing what is yours.
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Smallest useful act
- Read one source page in the Reading Room or one state page in the Atlas, and follow the citation back to the primary document. If you find an error or have a source to suggest, submit a correction — you do not have to become a member to do that.
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Artifact you leave behind
- A correction or source suggestion in the Library’s public record. Even unaccepted submissions are logged; accepted ones credit the next more-accurate version of the page.
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Standing you receive
- The standing of any member of the public who has read the record. No byline, no card — but the right to ask the next, harder question.
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Free signup
Library Card holder
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Public office
- A registered patron of the Library. The card identifies you (real name or, where role conflict requires it, pseudonym verified by the Library Board) and gives you a place to stand inside the institution.
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Smallest useful act
- Sign up: email, state, role, and one line about what brought you here. After that, the easiest contribution is a correction. Read a source page, find an error, submit it.
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Artifact you leave behind
- Your name (or pseudonym) on the Library’s patron rolls; the Newsroom in your inbox; the standing to submit corrections, annotations, and source suggestions for the Founders’ Library and the Scholarship section.
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Standing you receive
- The patron tier. The entry tier for everyone who wants to be in the conversation rather than only watching it.
Get a Library Card
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Issue-by-issue
Contributor
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Public office
- A Library Card holder whose corrections, annotations, or source suggestions have been accepted into the editorial summaries. The office is conferred page by page, not in advance.
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Smallest useful act
- Submit a substantive correction or annotation that survives editorial review. Suggest a primary source the Library is missing. Each accepted submission is one act of contribution.
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Artifact you leave behind
- A named or pseudonymous credit on the source page you contributed to. The credit is durable: it stays with the page across future revisions, with version history.
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Standing you receive
- A public byline on a public reference work. The same kind of standing a copy-editor or research assistant earns at any serious editorial institution.
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A few hours a year per title
Title Steward
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Public office
- A community curator of a specific in-copyright reference work in the Scholarship section. Especially well-suited to law-school faculty teaching trust law, trust-and-estates attorneys with Westlaw access, school-finance officers, state-lands-agency staff, and library-science curators with institutional access to the title.
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Smallest useful act
- Refine the Library’s stub summary of a single title into something authoritative. Renewable annually; bounded — a few hours a year per title.
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Artifact you leave behind
- The title’s editorial summary, with your byline as the maintaining steward. Open titles include Bogert’s “Law of Trusts and Trustees,” the Restatement (Third) of Trusts, the NEFA “Funding Public Schools in the United States and Indian Country” (2024), Souder & Fairfax 1996, and Culp et al. 2006.
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Standing you receive
- Named curator of a reference-work entry in a public library. The most actively recruited role in the Library at present.
See open titles
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Light, ongoing
State Correspondent
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Public office
- A Library Card holder who watches school-trust news in their own state and reports what they see. The closest analogue to Margaret’s description of the regular citizen who shows up, asks the question, and refuses to look away.
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Smallest useful act
- Submit Newsroom-eligible items from your state — board votes, budget moves, audit releases, court filings, agency turnover. One item is enough to start.
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Artifact you leave behind
- Newsroom items credited to you (or your pseudonym). A state-specific Newsroom feed delivered to your inbox.
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Standing you receive
- The named correspondent for your state. Light commitment, but a public office: when the Library cites a Newsroom item from your state, your name is on it.
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5–10 hours a month after onboarding
State Co-Librarian
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Public office
- The named curator of one state’s corner of the State Records section. The substantive expertise on each state’s school trust lives in the agency that manages those lands day-to-day; the Co-Librarian role brings that expertise into the Library. Primary recruit pool: state-lands-agency staff. Pseudonymity tier available for staff whose participation under their real name could be professionally costly.
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Smallest useful act
- Curate the per-state record — enabling act, original constitutional education clauses, key state Supreme Court decisions, period audit reports, AG opinions, reform-era statutes — and validate, supplement, and correct what the Library says about your state.
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Artifact you leave behind
- A maintained state corner of the State Records section, with your byline (or pseudonym) as the institutional steward.
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Standing you receive
- Named co-librarian of a state corner of a public library. The role is scarce — one per state — and carries the institutional standing of the agency or expertise the Co-Librarian represents.
For state-lands-agency staff →
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Governance
Library Board
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Public office
- A trustee of the Library itself. Separate from the operating boards of ASTL and OASTL, the Library Board provides editorial guidance, archival discipline, and the institutional memory of how a library posture differs from an advocacy posture.
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Smallest useful act
- Approve annual additions to the Founders’ Library and the Scholarship section. Arbitrate editorial disputes. Review retraction-and-correction protocols. Hold the Library to its own stated method.
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Artifact you leave behind
- Board minutes, annual editorial decisions, and the durable governance record of a public reference institution.
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Standing you receive
- Library trustee. The first three to five Board members are being recruited from library-science, archival, and digital-library-infrastructure backgrounds.
Pseudonymity
For contributors whose role might create employer or political conflict, the
Library offers a pseudonymity tier. Verification happens internally: real
name, employer, and contact information are held confidentially by the
Library Board's verification committee. The public-facing standing — the
byline on a source page, the Newsroom contributor credit, the State
Co-Librarian designation — accrues to the pseudonym. This is essential for
the recruitment of state-lands-agency staff and others whose participation
under their real name could be professionally costly.
What we don't ask
No copyright transfer (corrections and annotations are licensed CC BY 4.0 by
default; primary-source contributions are public-domain dedications). No
political alignment — the Library is a fiduciary-data project, not an
advocacy outlet, and accepts contributions from anyone with the accuracy and
good faith to do the work. No commitment beyond what you choose. No fees.
A note for state-lands-agency staff
If you work for a State Department of Lands, a State Land Board, the Utah
School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), Washington's
DNR, or any of the other thirty-plus state agencies that administer school
trust lands — please read the
dedicated page for state-lands-agency staff.
The lands you administer were set aside in 1785 for the maintenance of
public schools, and the Library is the institution that makes that record
findable to the country. Your professional familiarity with those records is
the highest-value contribution this Library can receive.
Curated by Library editorial team, 2026-05-08.
