It’s now that time in the project where we are looking for people to help us. Whilst I can just about catalogue the archive in the time available, I won’t be able to package everything to modern preservation standards on my own. This is where you come in!

The idea is that I catalogue at series level, then you weed for duplicates and package at the item level. Then when our new strongroom at York Explore is finished next year, we can move it all back catalogued and stabilised.

As well as hopefully being an interesting and fun experience for those taking part (getting your hands on all these wonderful records I’ve been banging on about for months, and making a real contribution to their preservation) the volunteer team is one reason why this project can be so ambitious in its scale. Traditionally an archivist on a funded cataloguing project would do every task from weeding, cataloguing, packaging and labelling on their own. Now, whilst we might enjoy this (I certainly do) it’s not really the most efficient use of time. A more MPLP approach is to split tasks up more efficiently into those that should be done by an archivist, and those that can be shared with others.

So, we are looking for up to 8 people who can do 3 or 6 hours per week on a set week day and time, to be arranged. It won’t be at York Explore, but instead at our external storage site, near the Askham Bar Park and Ride. We are provisionally looking at an early June start date and just carrying on until it is done!

If you would like to find out more, please follow this link to the Volunteering section of our website. There you can find more details of the project in the “Downloads” section on the right hand side, and how you can apply. We expect this to be quite popular, so please do get in touch soon if you are interested!

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