Volunteers Week 2011

To mark Volunteers Week 2011 (1-7 June), I thought it would be nice to start a new blog feature, which is to have our project volunteers tell you a bit more about what they are doing.  First up is a post from Morag, who has been coming in on a Monday afternoon to give me a hand.

“I was quite surprised when I was invited to volunteer to help out with the East Renfrewshire HLF project.  For one thing, even though I am an avid reader and use the library service a lot, I wasn’t really aware of what the Heritage Collection was.  Now, some four weeks later, I find that East Renfrewshire has a number of collections, each of which is a melange of different pieces and types of information, from broad and general records about the area, its development and history, to quite detailed accounts of family life in the last century.

The work of managing the collection falls to the Heritage Service staff, but it is very useful to have volunteers who can spare some time to help out.  The work is straightforward and a lot of it is common sense, but it is good to know that there is practical help available when a question crops up that I don’t know the answer to.  I attended the lecture recently by Craig Geddes (you may have seen it mentioned by Jenny), and it gave me a lot of insight into how research projects are managed.  I found his talk informative and was struck by Craig’s enthusiasm for the subject.

I spend time helping out at Giffnock Library once a week, cataloguing and packing items, and it really has become quite an absorbing thing to do.  I am focussing on the Gibson collection, and specifically on Margaret Gibson, daughter of the family.  There are a number of projects like this in progress, and others waiting for a spare pair of hands to help out.”

Thanks to Morag for being my first contributor.  Look out for more posts from our volunteers in the coming weeks and I hope you enjoy the periodic change of voice (there is definitely something about blogging that can encourage megalomaniac tendencies…)