When is a volunteer not a volunteer?

The standard answer to that question used to have something to do with the press-gang – not that I actually remember the days when able-bodied men hid rather than be taken away to man His Majesty’s ships.

The answer nowadays seems to have a lot to do with Mandatory Work Activity or young people or even, dare I say it, libraries.

Define: volunteer
Noun, a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task.

Verb, freely offer to do something.

There’s nothing in there about whether or not you get paid although in present-day usage it is generally the case that those who volunteer do so with the expectation that the freely means without expectation of monetary reward.

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is to point you at Phil Bradley's weblog which starts off by highlighting an article about Lewisham library volunteers on workfare scheme!!

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The Use of Volunteers in Local Study Library Projects: …

A Case Study of the Walter Gardiner Photography Project

an article by Beth Hewitt and Juliet Eve (University of Brighton) published in Evidence Based Library and Information Practice Volume 7 Number 1 (2012)

Abstract

Objectives
Interviews with library staff and volunteers were conducted to evaluate the use of volunteers in UK public libraries via a case study of the Walter Gardiner Photographic Project, a digitisation project based in Worthing Library, to inform future guidelines on volunteer usage and to make recommendations to existing practice.
Methods
Fourteen semi-structured interviews were carried out to explore the perceptions and experiences of both staff and volunteers of the project. All interviews were fully transcribed and then coded to identify emergent themes.
Results
Key positives for volunteers were professional training, good time management and organization by staff, the friendliness and approachability of staff, and the informal nature of the volunteering. Enjoyment of the work and forming close relationships with others were key motivating factors. For staff, the completion of work which would have otherwise been impossible was the most positive outcome. Problem areas identified by volunteers were lack of contact time with project staff and feeling isolated from other library staff. For project staff, a lack of professionalism on behalf of some volunteers was the primary negative. Key issues to emerge were the need to strike a balance between formal and informal management, the need for good integration between the volunteers and host organization, and the importance of acknowledging the nature of the voluntary commitment.
Conclusions
The project proved overall to be a successful example of using volunteers in public library projects with good examples of volunteer recruitment, training, and management being demonstrated. Areas of conflict that did arise stemmed from differing expectations of levels of service between staff and volunteers. Clarification on these expectations through a written volunteer agreement is advocated for further projects.

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