Volunteering

Many members are involved in the various projects organised by the society. They typically provide a total of 120 hours of work each week.

The biggest project is the digitisation and transcribing of old documents. This makes the contents of registers, and other historic documents, available to the public without risk of damage to the originals. This is important as some of these records are now in a fragile state.

Photographs can be digitised by scanning, and registers and other records are photographed. Once they are in digital format, they can be transferred to CD and viewed by visitors on the Archives computers.

To make searching of digitised registers quicker and easier, indexes are being prepared. Anyone with some spare time would be welcome to help in this. It requires only basic computer skills, and any necessary instruction will be provided. You can work at your own rate and need only do as much as convenient.

Some volunteers are helping with preservation by packing documents into acid-free containers. This can be tedious, and sometimes dirty, but is essential for long-term preservation. There is a limit to how fast this project can proceed as the acid-free packaging has to be purchased and it is extremely expensive.