Volunteers needed to help with digitisation of unit war diaries

4 Jun 2014 11:34 AM

Following the online release of almost 10,000 unit war diaries earlier this year, we are now conserving, sorting, digitising and itemising thousands more diaries from the WO 95 series as part of our First World War 100programme - and we need your help 

What's involved

An important part of the digitisation of the unit war diaries involves ensuring that the pages within the diaries are in the correct order, and in some cases within the correct diary. A team of volunteers helped us complete this work during the first digitisation project, and we're looking for more volunteers to help us sort and check the new batch.

Ideally we need volunteers who can come in to The National Archives for at least one day a fortnight to help us with this project, which will run between now (June) and September 2014. You don't need to have volunteered with us before, but it would be helpful if you've handled original documents and have an interest in the First World War. We'll provide the training that you need to take part in the project, as well as the security clearance that you'll need to access staff areas of the building. We can also reimburse travel expenses (up to £10 per day).

If you're interested, please complete our online form - we'll be in touch soon.

This digitisation project also means that some diaries will be unavailable in the reading rooms for a short period of time in the next few months - find out more on our unit war diaries page.

A different type of volunteering

If you're interested in getting involved but can't get to Kew, why not take part in Operation War Diary? This crowdsourcing 'citizen history' project needs your help to tag the data within thousands of unit war diaries. You don't need any experience or knowledge of the diaries to take part, as a simple online tutorial will help you get started. Visit the site and start tagging now.