The future of Trove, the National Library of Australia’s public digital archives, is in doubt with just six months funding left. The library’s director general has revealed that it is facing “very, very big decisions” in the next few months.
The last tranche of funding for Trove, which receives about $5m annually from the Federal Government and has more than 20m hits each year, is set to run out in July. While there remains a possibility that Trove will be thrown a last-minute lifeline in the May budget, that will come just weeks before it could be forced to cease operations.
According to the National Library’s modelling, Trove will need about $32m over the next four years to upgrade its digital archival system, which is aging. Introducing a paywall for users is not an option, the National Library’s director general, Marie-Louise Ayres said.
“From the very beginnings of the National Library’s work in the digital space, and we’ve been in this space now for well over 20 years, we have had one great driver – democratising access to our collections and the collections of other cultural institutions and making sure that they’re available to all Australians regardless of where they live, who they are, and their ability to pay,” she said.
“Free access to information is fundamental to libraries, and it is to us. So from our perspective, egalitarian access is what drives us and we have no interest at all in moving to an alternate model.”
No comments:
Post a Comment