Ready to Volunteer? StLGS Needs You!

Have you ever thought about volunteering for your local genealogical or historical society? There are so many different volunteer opportunities available, and right now at StLGS we are actively looking for new volunteers. Do you have IT or Windows Server experience? Do you have writing, editing, or graphics and layout publishing skills? Do you have experience working with printing or copying? Do you have the knowledge and expertise to teach a class on a specific topic or topics? Would you enjoy indexing church or synagogue, funeral home, or cemetery records? Are you willing and able to translate Spanish, French, or German?

We often hear people say they don’t reach out to their local society because they don’t have ancestors in the community in which they live. But you can still benefit so much by being an active member of a local society, as you continue to learn research skills and techniques. Many of our current volunteers assist other researchers when they hit brick walls or have questions. Or they work in our research room or with books or data that have universal appeal, not just in a specific geographic area.

All these jobs and more are available at our office, and we are appreciative of anyone’s help, member or not, although we really hope you will want to join and take full benefit of all that membership offers.

Our society office is open from 9 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Volunteers come in one, two, or all three days depending on their choice. If you have the desire to help out, we will help you find the right fit for you.

Volunteers Receive Training and Support

No experience is necessary for data entry jobs, and we will provide training and support to help you. Some of the data entry jobs are available to do from home. Data entry is a vital part of digitizing records and transferring information to our website. The process includes receiving records, scanning, entering data into spreadsheets, and proofreading. Once data is uploaded to the StLGS website, it allows all of us to further our research.

Only have a periodic Saturday available? We can always use volunteers for our public events, such as the Family History Conference in the spring or whenever we have a fall Speaker Series. These are one-day events, and we need volunteers to be room monitors, kitchen or lunch distribution assistants, and registration or sales table assistants.  If you are a member of the society, are you interested in being a member of the board? We have elected and appointed positions on the board, and input from a wide variety of our membership is very important.

Multiple Benefits of Volunteering!

What are the benefits of volunteering? You are among people who do not roll their eyes when you start talking about dead relatives. You meet people with similar interests. You create new friendships. You get answers to genealogical questions from other genealogists in the office. Sometimes you find a relative. There are several people in the office who have discovered they are cousins to each other based on their research.

St. Louis Genealogical Society volunteers at work: helping others, scanning, greeting visitors, and answering the telephone in our office. (Photos from the StLGS photo archive by Laura Mackinson, Ilene Murray, and Bob Goode.) 

And sometimes, you help another volunteer move their genealogy forward. One of the regular volunteers who does data entry, Kelly Cato, mentioned that everyone by her surname in southeast Missouri is related to her. Another volunteer went to the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia to use the newspaper collection. Doing her own research, she found an obituary for someone with the surname Cato and made a copy to take back to Kelly. Sure enough, the obituary was for one of Kelly’s favorite great-uncles, and she did not have a copy of it. So, one more piece of a genealogical puzzle was solved because both people are volunteers for StLGS.

Ready for more information? Go to the StLGS website at https://stlgs.org/about-us-2/volunteer-opportunities and read about all of the volunteer opportunities. Complete the Volunteer Interest Form and you will be contacted by our volunteer coordinator, Marilyn Brennan. Or contact Marilyn directly at volunteers@stlgs.org. And if you had ancestors in other locations, contact the historical or genealogical society in those places and see what you can do to help them.

(Many thanks to StLGS volunteer, Viki Fagyal, for writing this week's blog!)