DigiVol:Let's celebrate......100,000 images taken

Since May, 2011 DigiVol volunteer digitisers have taken over 100,000 images from Entomology, Malacology and Archival Materials.

The industrious volunteer digitisers have taken over 100,000 images from the Entomology Collection, Malacology Collection and Archive and Records since May, 2011. This is an extraordinary team effort beneficial to the various Collections in the Museum.

And the good news is that the productivity of DigiVol will increase further with the expansion of the digitisation lab becoming a 5 day operation in November, 2012. The Australian Museum’s Foundation made this possible by approving our funding for a further year.

And by expanding our working days, we will need 30 new volunteers in the lab to cover both Mondays and Thursdays. Our recent recruitment response from Museum members, students and web users has been very successful which will result in each volunteer being inducted and participating in practice sessions with experienced volunteers. Prior to this new volunteer intake, we have over 70 experienced and skilled volunteers.

Volunteer digitisers often talk about feeling hard done by if they do not get their weekly Museum fix. In order to acknowledge and harness this enthusiasm and commitment to DigiVol and its work, we started a very popular initiative by organising ‘behind the scenes’ tours with Museum management and staff. We would like to acknowledge and thank the following areas for their time, enthusiasm and commitment to supporting our Museum’s volunteers: Entomology, Archives and Records, Research Library, Malacology, Materials Conservation, Microscopy and Microanalysis Lab, Ichthyology, Anthropology and Taxidermy.