RHS Digital Dig project named as winner of ARA Archive Volunteering Award 2023
The Archives and Records Association (ARA) is pleased to announce in Volunteers’ Week 2023 that the Digital Dig project by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has won the national ARA Archive Volunteering Award 2023.
The ARA Archive Volunteering Award is given each year to projects which demonstrate how archives have supported volunteers in the previous 12 months. The awards are supported by the Archives and Records Association (who also administer the awards), the UK National Archives, the National Records of Scotland, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the Welsh Government.
Digital Dig - the winning project, is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) and delivered by the RHS in partnership with the Museum of English Rural Life, Reading (MERL) and The Urswick School, Hackney. Funded by NLHF it was originally intended to run for one year from April 2022 but has now been extended to November 2023 so that the RHS can run an additional Digital Ambassador project, digitise further nursery catalogues and continue the transcription and geotagging volunteer offer.
The Digital Dig project was set up to help uncover and document hidden horticultural history through three distinct volunteer projects. It centres on a rare and unique collection of more than 28,000 plant nursery catalogues representing over 2,000 individual nurseries, dating back to 1612. This collection is a fascinating environmental and social history archive, tracking the changing face of gardening infrastructure over time. The Digital Dig volunteers have all created digital resources that will make this previously fairly inaccessible collection widely available to users online.
The project has three volunteering strands which each looked to attract differing target audiences:
Transcribers – this attracted volunteers with an interest in horticulture that wanted to engage with RHS collections, develop digital skills and volunteer remotely.
Geotaggers – specifically targeted to students and volunteers interested in remote micro-volunteering opportunities. This work appealed to those that had an interest in gardening, wanted experience of heritage work for career development, or who wanted to know more about the RHS collections.
For both of these roles the RHS wanted to reach volunteers that weren’t in the usual catchment area for volunteering at the RHS sites. They also wanted to offer flexibility around when volunteers wanted to complete the tasks assigned to them.
Digital Ambassadors – this involved two youth groups in areas that related to the nursery catalogue collection: The Museums Partnership Reading youth panel, Reading and students at The Urswick School, Hackney. The RHS specifically wanted to work with young people on a digital engagement project and capture their views and insights about the collections.
The project aimed to open up flexible, remote volunteering opportunities to people that might not normally volunteer for the RHS either due to physical location, time commitments or lack of connection to the work of the RHS. They specifically hoped to target a younger audience to engage with the collections and wanted to explore opportunities to give them a voice via social media and digital engagement.
The Archive Volunteering Award judging panel felt that this project was very well conceived and carried out. They were particularly impressed by the positive impact on the volunteers as evidenced by the thorough evaluation. The project also demonstrated the value of flexible, remote volunteering to increase the number, geographic catchment and age range of volunteers. There was a clear impact on the service through increased awareness, new audiences, creative engagement as well as significant transcription and geotagging of the particular collection that was at the centre of the project. It was good to see that the evaluation had led to clear lessons learned and that there were already plans to embed remote volunteering in the organisation. The panel felt that this project provided a good model for other organisations looking at digital volunteering and seeking opportunities to diversify their volunteer base. The use of low-cost online tools that were available to anyone with an internet connection meant that the project really delivered in terms of the funding and the content delivered and made accessible.
Karen Clarke of the RHS says:
“We are thrilled to receive the ARA Archive Volunteering Award 2023. The enthusiasm and commitment of the Digital Dig volunteers has gone far beyond our expectations and we are so grateful for their incredible contribution. The resulting work is testament to the number of hours that the volunteers have spent transcribing and geotagging the nursery catalogues. The films produced by the Digital Ambassadors are also a wonderful showcase of how the project captured the imaginations of the young people involved.
It has been a real pleasure getting to know many of the volunteers both near and far, we certainly didn’t expect the project to have such a widespread international reach. We wanted the Digital Dig volunteers to feel part of something even though they were working remotely and this award celebrates each and every volunteer that gave their time to make the project a success. We would also like to thank the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Digital Ambassador partners that made this project possible.”
Further information on the project can be found at: https://www.rhs.org.uk/education-learning/libraries-at-rhs/news-projects/digital-dig
And our case study on this project can be found here
The judging panel also Highly Commended two other entries:
Queer Norfolk
And
Life with the Lionesses: Twenty-Five Years of Women’s International Rugby League (later more generally known as the Women in Rugby League Project) by Heritage Quay in Huddersfield
They also made a special commendation for the two volunteers at Queer Norfolk:
Adam Baker and Beau Brannick for their amazing contribution to the project.