Archive friends and volunteers
Nottinghamshire Archives wants to set up a Friends organisation and is holding an open meeting on Wednesday 28 September 2011 at 7.30pm to discuss the idea and to hear a talk by Dr Elain Harwood, Senior Architectural Investigator at English Heritage and author of the Pevsner Architectural Guide for Nottingham, on ‘The Value of Archives to Understanding the Built Environment’. Afterwards, Mark Dorrington will talk about the planned friends organisation and answer questions. To reserve a place (or to register an interest if you are unable to attend) please telephone 0115 958 1634.
The Friends will be different from the Nottinghamshire Archives Users Group (NAUG), which is comprised of representatives of local and family history societies whose members regularly use the Archives service, together with a number of regular readers and members of the Archives staff. If you would like more information about NAUG, you can find meeting minutes online.
Archives is also looking for volunteers to help with two important projects. It is three years since Nottinghamshire Archives Worldwide Catalogue (NAWCAT) went online. It currently holds over 15,000 catalogue entries, but this only represents a small percentage of the total holdings. There are still 47 years worth of catalogues to add to the web — hence this appeal for volunteers to help input Archive catalogues onto Excel databases, which can then be transferred onto NAWCAT. Training will be given to all volunteers. Also, between 2005 and 2010, a group of volunteers listed all the bishop’s transcripts (contemporary copies of the parish registers). Now, the resultant catalogue for the earliest series, c1600–1815, needs entering onto Excel so that it can be transferred onto NAWCAT. The earlier series have already been entered and can be viewed on-line on the web site under the references DR/1/6 for the years 1813–1835 and DR/1/7 for 1836–1902.
To date volunteers have worked at Nottinghamshire Archives, but for this project the Archives are looking for people who can work at home or in their local library. You don’t even have to live locally, as the Archives will happily post to you the necessary paper catalogues so you can help. If you have an interest in history or would like to update your IT skills, this may be the volunteer project for you.
If so, please contact Nottinghamshire Archives, County House, Castle Meadow Road, Nottingham, NG2 1AG, tel 0115 950 4524, to request an application form. Alternatively forms can also be downloaded here.
