National Volunteers Week 2023

With National Volunteer Week underway, the museum would like to take the opportunity to express our appreciation and gratitude to our many volunteers. This month we delve into some of the important roles that volunteers play in the museum. We have asked some volunteers to contribute to this post about their responsibilities and experiences at The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum to give you an insight into the work behind the scenes.

First up, read about Lindsay’s Small Collections Digitisation placement:

“It’s hard to believe I have been volunteering with the museum for five months now! In January I began a work placement with The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regimental Museum, assisting Rod with digitising the small objects collection. I got the opportunity to clean, photograph, research, and compile data for regimental badges, jewellery, medals and more. What fun it’s been to discover the stories and the people tied to these special objects. Completing the Museum Studies postgraduate program at the University of Glasgow, it’s been such a valuable experience to build hands-on skills in collections care at the museum. Now, I understand the deep process of handling museum objects, assessing their condition, and entering such details into the museum’s database. With so many small objects in the collection, the work is never quite finished!”

Up next, we have Caitlin, Digital Content Volunteer:

“My role at the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum is to write the monthly blogs that are posted onto the museum website and social media platforms for everyone to read! I am thoroughly enjoying this role because it has given me the opportunity to research and learn about different stories that are connected to the Regiment and communicate that history to a wider audience. It is especially exciting when I can visit the museum collections and handle some of the objects that are connected to the stories in the blog posts, such as the vast collection relating to Private James Weir Baird, 7^th (Stirlingshire) Battalion, who was a prisoner of war in WW2 (see the April blog post for the full story)! Volunteering with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum has been so much fun and given me a valuable experience of the workings of a museum that can help me in my future career! I cannot wait to research more stories and share them with you all!”

Charleyrose, Evaluation Volunteer, has also explained her role at the A&SH Museum:

“As a volunteer at The Argyll and Sutherland Highlander Museum, I have learned valuable information. My role within the museum was to gather surveys regarding the launch of our virtual tour and then collate that data, this allowed me to interact with people from all over the world. Throughout this experience I have been able to understand how a museum works behind the scenes and the process that goes into everything, this has allowed me to decide to pursue work in museums as I leave university after completing a masters in Museum Studies.”

From all the the museum staff, thank you to our volunteers and all that they do for the museum.

Written by Caitlin Stewart, Digital Content Volunteer, with excerpts from Charleyrose and Lindsay.