Engagement

Volunteering – Celebrating 10 Years

This year was a very special year as the Volunteering Scheme celebrated its 10th anniversary. More than 300 volunteers of all ages, abilities and backgrounds have now given their time to support the Library while having the opportunity to develop their skills and socialise. During the year, 82 individuals gave over 5,600 volunteering hours while carrying out 24 tasks.

Many volunteers are now working in a new room for volunteer work that was opened as part of the development of the Clip Centre for the Wales Broadcast Archive in the South Reading Room. The aim of this room is to make volunteering work more visible and give volunteers more opportunity to work in groups and socialise.

The partnership between the volunteering scheme and the People’s Collection Wales programme continues, and a number of postgraduate students who have recently become volunteers are receiving accredited digitization training. A new project was launched this year to help maintain the Library’s flower gardens, and we are working with The Recorder of the Gorsedd on another new task to create a comprehensive list of members of The Gorsedd of the Bards from 1860 onwards.

Virtual volunteers have been tagging and describing photos from the Library’s collection of Photo Books from the 19th century on our crowdsourcing platform. There are 245 albums and tens of photos in each, and more than 75% of the collection is now complete.

Summer of Fun Workshops

Many young people came to the Library over the summer in order to learn and have fun by being part of workshops on different themes. These sessions were part of the Library’s contribution to supporting the Welsh Government’s Summer of Fun scheme to help children and young people recover from the pandemic through the school holiday enrichment programme. 12 workshops were presented on three themes that ranged from creating Lego models of the Library building, to learning about scientists from Wales and learning about the history, construction and architecture of the Library building. Young people took part in fun experiments while learning about the scientists William Grove (hydrogen energy experiment), Mary Dillwyn Llewelyn (photography experiment) and Megan Watts Hughes (idiophone experiment). They also had the opportunity to visit unfamiliar and remote locations, including the tunnel that runs under the foundations of the Library.