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Volunteer with LAGANZ

LAGANZ has a range of activities suitable for volunteers, many of which involve working from home, online as well as working with collections directly.

• Volunteer Activities
• Schedule of Activities
• Stay In Touch
• Unsubscribe from the Volunteer List
• Index Cards Transcription

Volunteer Activities

Volunteers need not have specific archives, museum or library skills or professional training to become involved as a volunteer. Many of the skills you use in your job or personal activities will be of value to us. We try to find activities that are a good fit with your personal interests.

Note: "LGBTTFIQ" means any person who identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, takatāpui, fa'afafine, intersex or queer. This includes any same-sex attracted, transgender or intersex members of any indigenous community of the Pacific, or of any other community.

Collection Activities

• Working bees - We often work in groups at National Library to arrange and list new collections so they can be accessed by researchers. You could be working with audio and video tapes, with manuscript papers of groups and individuals, with posters, photos or ephemera. Contact: Roger Swanson.
• Collecting material from LGBTTFIQ events and venues. Contact: Roger Swanson.

Outreach Activities

• Building our LGBTTIFQ contacts directory - We are developing a nationwide directory of groups and networks so we can improve our contact with these groups. Your community knowledge and contacts, or your web research and data entry skills could be really useful. Contact: Donal Raethel.
• E-newsletters - Contribute content and/or editing/design skills for our irregular newsletters. This can range from interviewing and writing a profile of some recent donors of collections to preparing and formatting newsletters in MS Word and Acrobat PDF. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.
• Presence at Big Gay Out, Out in the City and local Pride events - Help us have an effective presence at these events. We always have a presence at Out in the Park (Wellington) but would love to have local support people in other centres helping us have a presence around New Zealand. Contact: Roger Swanson.
• LAGANZ events - We often need support with organising events for Friends and the wider LGBTTFIQ communities. Contact: Donal Raethel.

Website

• Website redevelopment - We have a small working group focusing on options for redeveloping the website and improving its content. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.

Digitisation and the Digital Archive Project

Digitisation is important to enable online database access to the descriptions of items in our collections initially and ultimately to digital versions of collection items. At the moment researchers must visit the Archives in Wellington or ask a curator to search for them in the card catalogue. We are also developing our plans to commission a Digital Archove platform over the next five years.

• Digital Archive Project - See Digital Archive Project for a full schedule of workshops, meetings and forums on aspects such as fundraising, website redevelopment, metadata frameworks and collecting LGBTTIFQ+ social media content from March to June 2022.
• Index cards digitisation, transcription and metadata mapping - We have scanned and corrected the OCR'd data from 4838 index cards using the fun online tool From the Page. After our two week Index Card Transcribathon in July 2021 and successful pilot with Posters Index Cards there is still work to do to map the index card data to our metadata schema. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.
• Digitisation planning and funding - We are developing a digitisation strategy for the Archives and will need to seek funding for specific projects or initiatives. Help us to communicate why these initiatives are important and to develop effective funding proposals. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.
• Metadata standards - Join a small working group researching metadata standards for digital and physical collections. We're looking at DCMI Terms and Records in Context, for example, as well as specific controlled vocabularies that can be applied to the metadata describing LAGANZ collections and items. This work is critical for our digitisation initiatives. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.

Schedule of Activities

See also the workshops and online forums planned for September to October 2022 for the Digital Archive Project.

Stay in Touch

We operate one MailChimp list for both Friends and Volunteers. Emails to volunteers however are targeted at those who tag Volunteering as one of their interests in the signup form.

• LAGANZ Friends and Volunteers List Signup

Unsubscribe from the MailChimp Friends and Volunteers List

If you would like to unsubcribe, and be taken off our list of prospective volunteers, please submit your email address at Unsubscribe from the LAGANZ Friends and Volunteers List. Thank you for your contributions to date!

If you'd like to remain a Friend but not be approached about volunteering use the 'Update preferences' link in a recent email from us to remove 'Volunteering' as one of your interests.

Contact a Trustee

Feel free to make personal contact with the Trustee or Curator contacts listed above to find out more about these activities.

• Gavin Hamilton: gavin.laganz@gmail.com, +64 21 0200 7913
• Roger Swanson: curators@laganz.org.nz, +64 27 444 3961
• Donal Raethel: donal.laganz@gmail.com

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Last updated: 4 Sep 2023

Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand (LAGANZ) | Te Pūranga Takatāpui o Aotearoa
PO Box 11-695, Manners St, Wellington 6142
Alexander Turnbull Library, 70 Molesworth St, Wellington 6011
NEW ZEALAND

Curator Tel: +64 4 462 3972 | Trust Secretary Mob: +64 27 444 3961

curators@laganz.org.nz | facebook.com/lgarchivesnz | instagram.com/lgarchivesnz