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Heritage project volunteers needed
Warkworth Museum is looking for people to become involved in this project and hopes to create a couple of teams, which will consist of a photographer/digitiser and a cataloguer. The digitiser will conduct basic, bulk digital capture and the cataloguer will create and prepare the data/records to be matched to the digital images. There is also opportunity for new volunteers to help create administrative histories for the records to provide more context. The Maritime Museum will provide full training and support, with the goal of building a volunteer digitisation team in Warkworth, applying best practice digitisation techniques. This is a great opportunity for people in the community to become involved in a local heritage project and learn new skills. For more information, contact Victoria Joule at the museum on 425 7093.
A project that promises to help preserve hundreds of precious archival documents will start at the Warkworth Museum in February.
It is a collaborative project with Auckland’s Maritime Museum funded largely by Te Puna Tahua Lottery Grants Board and Pub Charity, and will initially involve the digitisation of material such as minute books, letters, certificates, maps and plans.
Museum manager Victoria Joule is thrilled Warkworth has been chosen as the first museum in Auckland to participate.
“We hold a range of archival primary material which relates to the people and development of our district,” Joule says.
“An increasing number of researchers and members of the public want access to this material and while visitors can view them at the museum, we are conscious that we are putting these unique treasures at risk of quicker degradation through handling them and exposing them to light.
“By creating digital images of the material, we can better preserve the originals while still providing access to the public. We’ve known this for some time, but lacked the funding, skills, knowledge and people to actually do it.
“So, we are very excited to be able to work with the Maritime Museum on the creation of a digi-hub which, through collaboration, is aimed at helping museums like Warkworth meet their digital goals. It’s a fantastic opportunity.”
Maritime Museum representatives will be at the Warkworth Museum on December 6 to talk about the project and answer any questions from potential volunteers.
Project manager Heidi Schlumpf says the museum hopes to eventually involve all of Auckland’s 75 small to medium-sized heritage organisations in the digi-hub.
“We chose to start with Warkworth because its collection management system is very well set up and Warkworth has a strong maritime link, both through its shipbuilding heritage and the river,” Schlumpf says.
The digital images in Warkworth Museum’s collection will not be available online at this stage, but it will be a seamless step to make this happen once the museum has the resources available to do so.
The museum needs to raise $30,000 to buy the necessary equipment for the digi hub project, and is more than halfway towards this target, following receipt of a $20,000 Pub Charity grant.
For a behind-the-scenes look at the project, visit: https://www.maritimemuseum.co.nz/behind-the-scenes-digitisation
