Please fill out the volunteer timesheet as your hours help towards getting grant. Some granting agencies allow volunteer hours in the place of money when the Society has to supply dollar for dollar

Volunteer Time Sheet

Or you may fill out an online form to record your hours here:

Online Volunteer Hours Submission

Cemetery Transcribers - Queen's Park Cemetery

Notification - Let Lynda Alderman, Projects Committee (949-4093) know if you're coming
Keep your eye on dist-gen announcement before 8 am on the day of the session if it is being cancelled due to inclement weather.

Digitizers

Project: Digitization of early Alberta and Calgary family history and other records
Where: at home
Special Ability: Interest in learning how to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology
Tools needed: A scanner equipped with OCR software
Frequency: At your leisure
Credit: You'll be recognized on our planned Volunteers Appreciation webpage
Contact: Projects Chair

Special Event Helpers

Project: FamilyRoots Event (October) and other special presentations thoughout the year.
Where: various venues in Calgary
Special Ability: Interest in genealogy, basic knowledge of AFHS activities/services, communication skills, ease in meeting/greeting people, simple arithmetic skills
Tools needed: A smile,
Frequency: 1 or 2 days a year
Credit: You'll be recognized on our planned Volunteers Appreciation webpage
Contact: Volunteer Chair

Internet Surfer/Reviewer/Guide

Project: enhancing the breadth and depth of the AFHS website for member and public use.
Where: work from your home
Special Ability: ability to evaluate websites' potential for its provision of unique advice, for it's provision of data, or for it's provision of a unique finding aid; and to verify that it isn't already linked from the AFHS website (you'll be given a tour to ensure that you're conversant with where your specialized content is likely to be linked). Volunteers should indicate their preferred specialization (i.e., geographic, technical, or methodological) such as Ontario, software, or census.

See the AFHS Scotland webpage for the work of our first guide, Doug Hay.
Tools needed: access to internet/e-mail
When: at your convenience, ongoing need
Commitment: willingness to surf/review/recommend in one area of specialization for minimum of 3 months (England, Ireland, Wales, Ontario, & East Coast Canada are in particular need at this time; provincial specialists also needed)
Frequency: submission of new sites on a monthly basis
Credit: volunteers will be recognized as Geographic-stewards on the respective webpages
Contact: The Webster

AFHS Program Committee Member

Project: We have one evening meeting a year in May to set the outline for the programs for next season. Communication after that is by telephone, mail and e-mail. We share out the task of contacting the speakers and seeing to their needs, before and at the time of their talk, amongst the 5 active members of the committee (we have a number of affiliate members whose only task is to come up with brilliant suggestions for talks) So the maximum "caseload" would be 5 speakers.
Where: apart from the one planning session, the work is done from home. On the day that the assigned speakers are giving their talk, we are there to see that everything goes OK and to introduce the speaker.
Special Ability: a broad-based interest in genealogy and a modicum of persuasiveness.
Tools needed: telephone
When: There are some deadlines, but generally one can work at one's own pace. We try to have most of the talks arranged by the first meeting of each season.
Commitment: Around 10 - 20 hours per year
Credit: Volunteers will be recognized on our online volunteer honour roll and will be credited on the website, at meetings and in the Annual Report.
Contact: Programs Chair

World-Wide

Saving Graves Get involved with making a difference. Cemeteries being battered and bruised may need your help.
Free BMD - this project intends to provide free Internet access to the Civil Registration index information for England and Wales which is currently 100 years old (the 62 year period from 1837 to 1898. Some important FAQs and answers for potential volunteers can be found at: Volunteer FAQs. As of August 1999, 70 volunteers had transcribed 270,000 items.
FreeUKGen Free BMD was the original project, but the coordinators have developed a bigger vision, that more than BMD records need to be freed for public access. This page will lead you to volunteering options pertaining to UK Census materials. 1891 Devon County is the pilot that is being developed in August/September 1999.
HelpList - volunteers needed to do lookups in your community
Kindred Konnections - In exchange for one the equivalent of of extracting data from one image of a family group sheet, you get to browse/use their database for an hour. Simple to do - entirely browser-assisted (no additional software needed). You can bank your time or use it right away. Project initiated by National (US) Genealogical Society, and now hosted by Kindred Konnections.
US Census - Transcribers - scroll down to SK Publications. Volunteers needed to transcribe US census pages that are not yet transcribed/online with Rootsweb/US GenWeb (non-profit), and that are available from SK Publications (profit) on CD ROM. See also US GenWeb site for more information.
US Census - Transcription Proofreaders - associated with the above project of Rootsweb/US Genweb.
New York - The 1903 Ship Passenger List Index Transcribing Project
Volunteers needed to rent one microfilm from the National Archives Series T715. Films 316 to 423. This covers every ship that has arrived in New York City in 1903. I now have 48 volunteers and seek 60 more volunteers.

Each volunteer will transcribe only the names of every passenger list on one microfilm onto paper and then into text files on their computer and eventually email them to me after each text file gets finished. If you have 10 ships, you can send 10 text files one at a time after each gets done. The text file name will have the film number, the month and day in 1903 and the name of the ship. The file itself will have group of names of passengers who arrived on that ship. I set no time limit when this will get done. Enjoy your volunteer work, seeing that you will help others and yourself.

I'm currently assigning microfilms to those who wish to volunteer. I plan to place the text files on a cd. I will either do the lookups myself or make copies of the cd for free if someone sends me a cd.

AGLL rents or sells such films as well as The [US] National Archives or the Family History Centers. Your public library can join AGLL for free. Then you can rent a film for $3.25 (US] plus shipping for a month and you can extend the rental by having your library calling AGLL and extend it month by month for another $3.25 [US] and then you pay the library who will send the money to AGLL. If you find that you need the film for 5 months, and that appears fine with me, you might want to buy the film for $17.95 [US]. You'll give the $17.95 [US]to the librarian and you would tell the librarian you want to have them buy the film for $17.95 [US] for you and you will make sure that you get the film as its owner.

For example, the list will look like this in your text editor:

T715 Roll 316 with the ship name SS Livonia arriving on January 2,1903 would have the filename: 3160102SS Livonia.txt and passenger names in the file.
John Smith
John Rolfe
Dudley DoRight
George Washington

For more information, you can contact