The National Library of Australia's online archive Trove will cease to add to its collection after failing to secure dedicated funding in this week's federal budget.

Sue McKerracher, chief executive of the Australian Library and Information Association, said the news was a blow to local historians, humanities researchers and individuals delving into their family histories.

Trove was launched in 2009 and since has digitised millions of records from its own collection as well as items from state and local collections, placing them online for the public to access.

The budget estimates papers state the National Library will shed 28 staff as the result of a $20 million funding cut.

Library management had previously said that unless it was fully funded, it would cease aggregating content on Trove.

"Trove will continue but it will not reach its full potential because small museums and libraries and galleries archives who had not yet put their collections on Trove will have to find funding for that instead of it being free," Ms McKerracher said.

"At the moment it is growing by several million items a week."

The website will remain in its current state but "unfortunately local collections will not be part of our national heritage collection", Ms McKerracher said.

"We won't see history of small towns and local communities and individual families."

History available 'anywhere'

Professor Deb Verhoeven from the School of Media and Communications at Deakin University said the value of Trove was that Australia's vast size was no barrier to accessing information.

"In the past you had to go to Canberra to read these newspapers," Professor Verhoeven told 720 ABC Perth.

Part of the collection: The West Australian reports on a snake charmer bitten by a tiger snake on January 13, 1928. ( Supplied: Trove )

"Now you can sit in your living room or at school and get the same information."

She said Trove was internationally renowned.

"I can't tell you the number of conferences I got to overseas where people from around the world ask me about Trove," she said.

"It is perceived to be the world's leading cutting-edge technology in terms of information provision to the public."

Personal history found online

A number of 720 ABC Perth listeners shared their stories of how their family histories had been researched using Trove.

"Among other things I found my great-grandfather in the paper for winning a crossword competition in 1933. A little piece of social history," Marie-Louise Hunt said.

"I found articles on my parents (both deceased)," Jan Sims said.

"My mum was looking for pen pals and my dad having a fall from a horse in bushland in Belmont. It has given me a little more insight in my family tree. Great resource," Ms Sim added.

"[I found] among other things a delightfully detailed description of a distant rellie's wedding in Pingelly in 1915, even including what my great-grandparents gave them as a gift," Ann Rayma Congrene said.

Digitisation can protect from disaster

Ms McKerracher said Trove guaranteed local collections would not be permanently lost.

"We have a lot of natural disasters in Australia," she said.

"Marysville lost its entire local history collection in Black Saturday and it hadn't been digitised.

"By digitising collections, it means even if the items are lost, the history is not."