For librarians and archivists
What this Library is
America’s School Trust Library is an Oregon nonprofit public benefit corporation, Oregon Registry No. 259005891, formed in July 2026. It collects, verifies and publishes the record of the school trust lands the United States granted to the states at statehood — what was granted, what was promised, what happened to it, and what the courts have said about it. Beginning in 1785, Congress set aside land in every township — the six-mile survey square the country was laid out in — to support the public schools; roughly twenty states still hold those lands and their funds today. The Library publishes in the open, corrects in public, and keeps a numbered corrections ledger anyone can read. Everything is free: no fee, no account, no affiliation. It takes no side in any case or campaign.
It is not asking you for money. It asks for documents and hands.
schooltrusts.org
The Library’s catalog held 72 holdings on August 10, 2026, and not one of them carried the label Verified — including the ones its own founders wrote. A data point on a state page may carry a Verified badge for that figure; the catalog’s Verified label, for a whole holding checked by a second reader, has not yet been earned by any holding.
That is on purpose. Verified means a second, independent reviewer has checked the item against its source and signed for it. The Library does not yet have that reviewer, so the label stays unused. Better an empty shelf than an unearned label.
Filling that gap is professional work. So is most of what follows.
The shelves that need a keeper
A state’s record. The Library keeps a file for every state, and inside each file the order holds: the federal grant, then the state’s constitutional and statutory language, then the decisions, then the money and what it pays out, then the gaps flagged for further research. A State Co-Librarian is the senior curator of one state’s corner of that record — the person whose name sits at the foot of those pages. The work: review what the Library says about your state and flag what is wrong; identify the period sources its shelf is missing; triage what other readers send in. The Library’s own description of the load is five to ten hours a month after an onboarding pass, renewable annually.
The corrections queue. Every submitted error has to be reproduced, checked against the primary source, decided, published with a number, and — the part institutions fail at — propagated to every other page that repeated it. The Library has failed that test more than once, which is why it is now written down as a duty rather than left as an intention.
A named special collection. When a body of work arrives from one creator it is kept intact, under its own name, with a scope statement and its own finding aid — the guide that tells a reader what is in a collection and where. Somebody has to write that finding aid.
What is asked, and what is not
Accuracy, good faith, and a stated amount of time. Not political alignment: the Library is a record-keeping institution, not an advocacy outlet, and it accepts work from anyone with the care to do it. Not your job. Not a credential — subject-matter expertise in school trust lands is welcome and is not required. The filter is the written standard and the review, not the résumé.
Recognition follows work already done. The Library does not confer standing because someone volunteers in the abstract; it recognizes a person after a useful thing has entered the public record — usually a correction, a missing primary source, or one verification note. Then the name goes on the page and travels with it.
One thing to know before you say yes: this Library publishes its own mistakes with numbers on them, and the first entries in its ledger corrected its own statements about itself. If a corrections ledger that names an institution’s errors in public would embarrass you, this is the wrong shelf.
Write two paragraphs to the Library at library@schooltrusts.net, addressed to the Secretary, Kenneth Magee.
In the first, say what you have kept — a collection, a catalog, a reading room, a state you know from the inside. In the second, say what you would take on and roughly how much time you have. An honest “a few hours a month, irregularly” is a real answer and is read as one.
For the librarian and co-librarian roles the site also carries application pages — /apply/librarian/, /apply/state-co-librarian/ and /express-interest/co-librarian/. Either route reaches a person.
If you would rather start smaller than a letter, start with a correction. Open your own state’s file at schooltrusts.org/states/, find something wrong, and report it. A free Library Card opens the correction form; write to the Library instead if you would rather not open one. Corrections are decided on the merits, and the person who sends one is credited by name unless they ask otherwise.
Two other seats, in case they fit you better
Two Director seats are open, and so is the Law Librarian seat — under the bylaws a professional role rather than an officer or Director. All are one-year terms, uncompensated, renewable, with a signed annual disclosure. For these three seats two paragraphs is plenty; there is no form to fill in. The Law Librarian owns the citation standard and is the second signature on the Verified shelf — the part of the catalog whose items a second, independent reviewer has checked and signed for. If the seat is vacant, the Verified shelf does not grow. That is the point of it.
One honest limit
The Library has not yet filed its application for federal tax-exempt recognition; it is being prepared. No federal tax-exemption determination has been issued, and until one is, the Library does not describe contributions as tax-deductible.
