Trove cuts
Recently it was announced that the Federal Government's efficiency dividend would be making cuts of $20 million from cultural institutions. One of the implications of these cutbacks has been to the National Library of Australia's Trove database.
Trove allows everyone to search collections from cultural institutions across the country. They are also the largest organisation digitising collections for institutions, as well as providing grants for libraries, museums and historical societies to do the same. Trove has been seen as a world leading database which other national institutions are now trying to copy.
Trove has digitised hundreds of newspapers, maps, images as well as books and articles. It is now the first port of call for most people looking to research local or family history. Around 70,000 people use Trove everyday.
However with these cuts taking place 22 jobs at the National Library will be lost, with most of these coming from the digitisation department and Trove. This means that no new projects will be digitised for the next financial year while funding is being sought to continue to work on digitising newspapers and resources.
What this means for us is that no new newspapers will be digitised, digitised items will take longer to get uploaded to Trove.
If you would like to learn more, you can click on any of the following links:
If you would like to sign an online petition to help fund Trove, here are two:
But if you want to do more, contact your local member of Parliament and let them know that you would like to keep this world leading database running and to fund Trove. To see what other people are saying, search online for the hashtag #fundTrove.
