Friday 14 June 2013

Volunteers' week…a week later

We couldn’t let last week’s Volunteers' Week go by without a blog post to acknowledge all the great work our volunteers do.

Over the last few years our volunteer programme has gone from strength to strength and we are now able to offer a range of volunteer opportunities to teach and develop archive and conservation skills, from one-day taster sessions to long-term placements.

During Volunteers' Week, the Centre for Research Collections’ Student Support Officer, Serena, organised a fantastic event in which many of the volunteers working with University collections gave short presentations to describe the tasks they undertake and the benefit they are getting from them. It was an opportunity to see what others are doing, and has inspired us to keep enhancing our programme for the future!

Centre for Research Collections volunteers

Our LHSA volunteers are a great asset and we’re delighted that we have Kirsty, Eleanor and Mahesh cataloguing case notes as part of our Wellcome Trust-funded project; Karen and Veronica inputting information into our Royal Edinburgh Hospital database; Andrew researching the collections to identify material that could support our work to commemorate the First World War, and Fiona M who has recently completed cataloguing some of our photograph collection following on from her internship with us earlier in the year. This week has seen a new intern join us from Artlink and, like Andrew, Page will be researching the collections but her work will support an exhibition in the Talbot Rice Gallery later in the year to celebrate the Royal Edinburgh Hospital’s bicentenary. The LHSA team thank them for all their hard work and commitment.

Fiona P, one of our longest standing volunteers, who has taken a short break from volunteering with us having secured a 10-week internship working on Edinburgh University Archive material, merits special mention. We nominated Fiona for an Inspiring Volunteering Award, and we're really pleased that she won. Fiona attended an evening reception at the City Chambers last Wednesday to receive her well-deserved award from Edinburgh’s Lord Provost.

The official photo from the award ceremony

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