Winter 2017/18

Gloucestershire Heritage Hub

Volunteers and Volunteering at Gloucestershire Archives

Here at Gloucestershire Archives we currently have between 70-80 volunteers, ranging in age from 17 to 80+. Many of the older volunteers want to do something useful and engaging in retirement, and have a lifelong interest in heritage and history. The younger volunteers (including one University of Gloucestershire intern) volunteer because they want to either improve their CV, or gain experience before considering a career as an archivist.

Volunteers give us thousands of hours of their time each year, and we couldn’t do our job without you! We are reviewing the tasks we offer future volunteers and we have identified at least 15 separate work tasks they can do. When we open the new Heritage Hub, many of these volunteer role descriptions (a bit like job descriptions) will be advertised on the virtual Heritage Hub, our new website.

Volunteers carry out a range of tasks, including transcribing, working on CALM (our online catalogue), acting as search-room buddies, repackaging, helping draft funding applications, assisting at events, giving talks to community groups and a whole range of other things. Some are involved with providing practical support for specific project work, such as working on the constabulary heritage project. And one has been carrying out tasks helping us to design and build our new website.

 

Volunteer Ann Alford cataloguing a document. 

The way we make use of volunteers may well change in the future, so that volunteers can work for us remotely and spend a few minutes each week, for example, re-Tweeting or using Facebook. Offering just a few minutes a week, like this, is sometimes referred to as “micro-volunteering” and could appeal to people of working age who would not normally be able to commit to us in the way that most volunteers do. We want to create opportunities for more people to volunteer, even if it is just for a few minutes each week or each month – it all adds up, and it all goes towards raising our profile.

We are also looking forward to working closely with Family History Centre volunteers in the new building.

 

Family History Society volunteers working in the temporary Family History Centre.

Volunteers cannot replace staff, of course, but they bring new enthusiasm, ideas, energy, enquiring minds, different expertise and experience. We would like to thank all of our volunteers for everything you do for Gloucestershire Archives.

Sally Middleton

Community Heritage Development Manager

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