Volunteering

Opportunities

If you are interested in the heritage of Shropshire and fancy volunteering for Shropshire Archives you can get involved in two ways:

In person…

We have a number of volunteers of all ages who come to work with us at Shropshire Archives in Shrewsbury for different periods of time.  Help with cataloguing, photography, digitising and conserving written material, photographs, maps, books, prints and original artwork is always welcome.  Your previous experiences in life may be helpful but more often you will learn new skills and make a real difference. Once archive material is prepared in these ways, it can be made available to a wider range of users.

You can also get involved by supporting events, activities or office administration. History days in our wonderful county are always worthwhile and expand all our horizons. Even just pouring tea, you can talk to visitors and often more importantly, listen to their wealth of local knowledge.

Alternatively or additionally, you can get involved from home…

Take a look at the Heritage Heroes website. This is a virtual volunteering website allowing you to contribute to the preservation of the wonderful heritage of this county from your own home.  We would like your help in enhancing the records of certain archive and museum collections by transcribing documents, researching items or commenting on locations. There is an ever-growing list of projects is available on which to work and once one piece of work is completed, another comes online.

From the volunteers….

“I’ve been engaged for the past 2-3 years in the massive digitisation project, photographing and processing digital images for their eventual online access by members of the public.  It is slow work photographing page by page or image by image, made slower by the stops for interesting items!

The parish register recording the marriage of Clive of India’s daughter, devotes an entire page, instead of the usual two or three line entry, to Robert Clive’s official titles and achievements as well as a most fulsome comment on the appearance and charming character of his fragrant lady wife!

Among other things, the photographs revealed that during the 1920s and 1930s there were three “Boats For Hire” establishments on the River Severn between the Boat House Inn and Kingsland Bridge in Shrewsbury.”                                                                                                                                                                                                Graham