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Re: volunteers



I'll second Ellen's "It depends" - on the volunteer's interests and abilities
and motivation. We have volunteers doing everything from building shelves and
schlepping boxes around, to processing collections. Very dear to my heart are
those volunteers who perform data entry and database management. One
volunteer has a particular interest in and knowledge about tools, and another
in material on audio and video media.

Since we're such a small organization, and the two of us part-time paid
employees can't possibly get everything done, we treasure each of our
volunteers. We just need to be careful to get the right fit of person to
task, and to supervise the ongoing work.

I recently wrote a paper on volunteers, and suggest the following resources:

Finch, Elsie Freeman (Ed.).  1994.  Advocating Archives: An Introduction to
Public Relations for Archivists.  Metuchen, NJ.  Society of American
Archivists.  pp. 83-94.

Karp, Rachelle S.  1993.  Volunteers in libraries.  Small Libraries
Publication.  Chicago, IL.  Library Administration and Management
Association/American Library Association.

McCune, Bonnie F. & Nelson, Charlezine.  1995.  Recruiting and Managing
Volunteers in Libraries.  New York, NY.  Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.

Wilson, Marlene.  1976.  Effective Management of Volunteer Programs.  
Boulder, CO  Volunteer Management Associates.

Jody Georgeson
The Telecommunications history Group
P.O. Box 8719
Denver, CO 80201-8719

303-296-1221
telcomhist@aol.com