The federal government has thrown a $33m lifeline to the National Library of Australia to save Trove, the institution’s threatened public digital archive.
The pre-budget announcement on Monday pledged the emergency funding over the next four years for Trove, plus an additional $9.2m in ongoing annual funding, to save what the arts minister, Tony Burke, called one of Australia’s most significant historical and cultural resources.
Trove, the expansive archival database that holds billions of images, newspapers, documents, manuscripts and myriad other resources that are freely accessible to the public, was under threat of closure earlier this year, with its funding under the previous Coalition government scheduled to end on 30 June.
Trove is counted among Australia’s most popular internet domains and receives more than 20m hits each year.
On Monday, Burke described Trove as Australia’s “digital memory”.
“This funding helps restore and maintain our strong cultural infrastructure – a key pillar of Revive, the government’s new national cultural policy,” he said, adding: “It takes us a step closer to ending the budget cuts and culture wars of the previous government.”
In January, the National Library’s director general, Marie-Louise Ayres said Trove had been treading water for years under a funding model no longer fit for purpose, surviving on about $5m annually.
There has been a groundswell of support, with collecting institutions, historians, researchers and members of the public lobbying the Albanese government in recent months.
In February, Professional Historians Australia issued a public statement saying the threat to Trove funding was “just one of many crises” facing Australia’s national cultural institutions due to decades of budget cuts and minimal investment in cultural infrastructure.
“Left unchecked, it may result in exacerbating a distinct disinterest and a dangerous lack of understanding about the importance of our cultural heritage,” the statement said.
On Monday, Ayres said in a statement she was delighted Trove’s future had been secured.
“Hardly a day goes by when I don’t hear from a member of the public about what Trove has made possible,” she said.
“Whether that is the history of a group of trees around an oval in the suburb next to my own, or the history of the LGBTQI Jewish community, or research into the Queensland Native Police, or even the ways in which endometriosis has been handled in the Australian media, or when specific fish species were last sighted in inland rivers – I never cease to be amazed at the curiosity and ingenuity of Australian researchers, and delight in that curiosity.
“And I am so pleased that satisfying that curiosity will be possible for many, many years.”
