Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa

Kawe Mahara Home
Collections
Resources
Visit the Archives
Links
Board of Trustees
The Friends
Make a Bequest
Volunteer
Events
Digital Archive Project
Conferences
Oral History

 

Volunteer with Kawe Mahara

Kawe Mahara has a range of activities suitable for volunteers, many of which involve working from home, online as well as working with collections directly.

Volunteer Activities

Volunteers need not have specific archives, museum or library skills or professional training to become involved as a volunteer. Many of the skills you use in your job or personal activities will be of value to us. We try to find activities that are a good fit with your personal interests.

Volunteer drop-in sessions via Zoom every Thursday

Every Thursday, 7pm-7.30pm, Zoom meeting ID: 858 0857 6084

Join us for a chat, to get quick feedback or demos on your current activity, or to find out which activities are a good fit with your skills and interests. We tailor the agenda to fit whoever has joined us.

Email board@laganz.org.nz for the Zoom meeting password.

Collection Activities

  • Working bees - We often work in groups at National Library to arrange and list new collections so they can be accessed by researchers. You could be working with audio and video tapes, with manuscript papers of groups and individuals, with posters, photos or ephemera. Contact: Roger Swanson.
  • Collecting material from queer and takatāpui events and venues. Contact: Roger Swanson.
  • Trans & Intersex Archive Recovery Aotearoa (TIARA) working group - A working group who will collect trans and intersex archives in Aotearoa, with a focus on digital collections. "Trans" includes whakawahine, tangata ira tane, tangata ira kore, MVPFAFF+, non-binary, and other diverse gender communities.

Outreach Activities

  • Building our queer and talatāpui contacts directory - We are developing a nationwide directory of groups and networks so we can improve our contact with these groups. Your community knowledge and contacts, or your web research and data entry skills could be really useful. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.
  • E-newsletters - Contribute content and/or editing/design skills for our irregular newsletters. This can range from interviewing and writing a profile of some recent donors of collections to preparing and formatting our Mailchimp newsletters.Contact: Gavin Hamilton.
  • Presence at Big Gay Out, Out in the City and local Pride events - Help us have an effective presence at these events. We always have a presence at Out in the City (Wellington) but would love to have local support people in other centres helping us have a presence around New Zealand. Contact: Roger Swanson.
  • Kawe Mahara events - We often need support with organising events for Friends and the wider queer and takatāpui communities. Contact: Roger Swansonn.

Website

  • Website redevelopment - We have a small working group focusing on options for redeveloping the website and improving its content. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.

Digitisation and the Digital Archive Project

Digitisation is important to enable online database access to the descriptions of items in our collections initially and ultimately to digital versions of collection items. At the moment researchers must visit the Archives in Wellington or ask a curator to search for them in the card catalogue. We are also developing our plans to commission a Digital Archove platform over the next five years.

  • Index cards digitisation, transcription and metadata mapping - We have scanned and corrected the OCR'd data from 4838 index cards. After our two week Index Card Transcribathon in July 2021 and successful pilot with Posters Index Cards there is still work to do to map the index card data to our metadata schema. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.
  • Digital Archive Project planning and funding - We are developing a digitisation and digital archive strategy for the Archives and will need to seek funding for specific projects or initiatives. Help us to communicate why these initiatives are important and to develop effective funding proposals. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.
  • Metadata standards - Join a small working group researching metadata standards for digital and physical collections. We're looking at DCMI Terms and Records in Context, for example, as well as specific controlled vocabularies that can be applied to the metadata describing Kawe Mahara collections and items. This work is critical for our digitisation initiatives. Contact: Gavin Hamilton.

Schedule of Activities

Kawe Mahara Volunteer Activities
Date/Time Description Contact
Sat 23 Nov: 9.30am - 12 Noon, National Library, Wellington

Saturday Working Bees with Collections

Volunteer help working directly with some collection items is welcomed at our Saturday working bees. The work will include:

  • Filing of the newspaper clippings into subject folders
  • Listing a large donation of posters we received from the Burnett Foundation (formerly NZAF)
  • Arrangement and description of a number of manuscript collections that have been donated to the Archive.

 

Contact Roger at roger.laganz@gmail.com for further information and to express your interest.
Sun 10 and Sun 24 Nov, Sat 14 Dec: 1pm - 2.30pm, via Zoom

Weekend Working Bees with Digitised Index Cards

Help with correcting and coding our digitised index card data. This is vital work for developing our online catalogue of collections/items. The work will include:

  • Working in Google sheets online
  • Joining the Zoom to get some initial coaching on a task and for feedback/questions
  • Coding lines of card data so we can split lines that contain multiple fields of information.
    • For example, this line "1 box unsorted, Acc. No. 87-018" gets coded as "E|A" because we need the Extent (E) information (how much is there?) 1 box unsorted separated from the Accession number (A) information (when did the Archives receive it?) Acc. No. 87-018 that follows.
  • Using (or developing) your Worldcat and Google searching skills to help correct typos or missing details.

You can work with others' company online during the Zoom sessions or work independently and check in weekly/fortnightly. Volunteers are located around the country.

We make it fun by sharing the collection items we encounter that interest us. In some cases we will be able to retrieve items of interest from the collections to show on screen at later working bees.

Working bees will also be held online in Jan and Feb 2025.

Contact Gavin at board@laganz.org.nz or +64-21-02007913 for further information and to express your interest.

Every Thu, 7pm-7.30pm
Zoom meeting ID:
858 0857 6084

Volunteers' Thursday Drop-in Sessions

Join us for a chat, to get quick feedback or demos on your current activity, or to find out which activities are a good fit with your skills and interests. We tailor the agenda to fit whoever has joined us.

Find out the range of volunteer activities we need help with. These are informal sessions where we try and match up your interests and skills with activities that will help us achieve our goals.

We have activities that range from helping with outreach (our website, social media, contacting LGBTI+ community groups) to fundraising, to working with our collections, and the technical (metadata, commissioning a digital archive platform).

We welcome contributions of all kinds.

 

Contact Gavin Hamilton at board@laganz.org.nz or +64 21 0200 7913 (short notice is fine!) to receive the Zoom details.

Gavin can also make sure we cover your areas of interest in these sessions if you email to introduce yourself in advance.
TBA - None scheduled

Trans & Intersex Archive Recovery Aotearoa (TIARA) working group

The TIARA working group is organising to collect trans and intersex archives in Aotearoa, with a focus on digital collections. “Trans” includes whakawahine, tangata ira tane, tangata ira kore, MVPFAFF+, non-binary, and other diverse gender communities.

Being part of the Trans & Intersex Archive Recovery Aotearoa (TIARA) working group involves:

  • Collecting digital archives & uploading them to TIARA’s cloud drive
  • Building relationships with trans & intersex record-makers
  • Working collectively on archival strategies and codes of ethics
  • Readying these collections for Kawe Mahara's future digital preservation platform.

To join TIARA, you:

  • Have access to the internet and a device (e.g. phone, laptop)
  • Have approx. 20 minutes to 1 hour per week for TIARA work
  • Can attend regular (approx. monthly) working group meetings via Zoom
  • Do not have to have any archival experience or tech-savvy-ness - we will all be learning together! :)
  • Do not have to be trans or intersex.

We are organising into three subgroups: Ethics; Technical and Identification.

Contact Will Hansen at tiara.kawemahara@gmail.com for the Zoom details, information on the working group and to join in.

Stay in Touch

We operate one MailChimp list for both Friends and Volunteers. Emails to volunteers however are targeted at those who tag Volunteering as one of their interests in the signup form.

Unsubscribe from the MailChimp Friends and Volunteers List

If you would like to unsubcribe, and be taken off our list of prospective volunteers, please submit your email address at Unsubscribe from the LAGANZ Friends and Volunteers List. Thank you for your contributions to date!

If you'd like to remain a Friend but not be approached about volunteering use the 'Update preferences' link in a recent email from us to remove 'Volunteering' as one of your interests.

Contact a Trustee

Feel free to make personal contact with the Trustee or Curator contacts listed above to find out more about these activities.

Top

 

 

 

Last updated: 9 Nov 2024

Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa formerly Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand Te Pūranga Takatāpui o Aotearoa (LAGANZ)
Alexander Turnbull Library, 70 Molesworth St, Wellington 6011
NEW ZEALAND

Curator Tel: +64 4 462 3972 | Trust Secretary Mob: +64 27 444 3961

curators@laganz.org.nz | facebook.com/kawemahara | instagram.com/kawemahara