SignDNA has a range of activities suitable for volunteers, many of which involve working from home, online as well as working with archival items directly. We would welcome your offer to volunteer! Please have a look at the ‘How you can help’ menu for some ideas and contact us for a chat and to find out which activities are a good fit with your skills, interests, and availability.
Some of the tasks you can help with:
- Adding tags in the archive – this includes submitting photos of tagged individuals, and/or correcting names.
- Correcting text – improve transcript text for scanned articles.
- Processing publications and newsletters – we have hundreds waiting to be summarised and tagged before being uploaded.
- Writing or signing a biography of a Deaf leader to add to the biographies section. You also might have a story to add about a person on that page! Please look at our list of priorities at this time.
- Searching for external links (i.e. videos and articles) to add to the archive. This is an effective way of expanding the collection.
- Writing or signing about a particular Deaf Community Event or a Deaf Group & Project, utilising the items in the archive.
- Confirming the taonga source of articles (where and when it was published, etc). This can take a bit of detective work!
- Digitise videos, scan images and documents. This will need to be Auckland-based as that is where our equipment is.
- Transcribing and translation – captioning videos expands people’s access.
- Share your story! – either recording your own story or helping others record theirs.
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. Please contact us for a chat to see how we can work together.