Future of Trove Announced

Back in early January I posted a blog about the bleak future of Trove, with the lack of ongoing funding threatening the continuation of this wonderful free resource.

I warned that "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."

Happily, news has just been released that in its upcoming May budget, the federal government has promised $33 million over four years to the NLA.  Trove, will also be separately allocated funding of more than $9 million — a move the government said would secure the future of the service for years to come.

A statement from the National Library reads as follows :

The National Library of Australia is deeply grateful for the commitment of the Albanese Government to provide significant ongoing and indexed funding for Australia’s cultural and historical institutions. This allows the Library to focus on providing world-leading services to the Australian community from our physical building and storage facilities in Canberra, and via our digital library, Trove. The funding provides certainty and includes:

• Sustainable funding for our core operations, to further develop our collections and outreach activities and the services we provide to communities across Australia.
• Undertake critical ongoing building maintenance to:
  • continue replacing the antiquated heating, ventilation and cooling systems
  • ensure existing storerooms are watertight
  • replace leaking windows, and
  • address urgent safety and code compliance requirements.
• Extend our storage repository at Hume to store collection material (currently in rented storage that expires in 2025) with ongoing indexed funding to safely house our physical collection (which grows by approximately two kilometres every year) into the future.

This announcement comes as a great relief to all the historians and researchers who have gained so much from the continuing availability of this free online resource made available to all.

Great news indeed.