RHS Digital Dig - Archive Volunteering Award winner 2023
About the project
The Digital Dig is a project by the RHS in partnership with the Museum of English Rural Life, Reading and The Urswick School, Hackney, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF). Funded by NLHF’s Digital Skills for Heritage Initiative, the Digital Dig was originally intended to run for one year from April 2022 but has now been extended to November 2023. This will enable the RHS to 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, centring 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 created digital resources that will make the collection widely available to
all, online.
Who are the volunteers?
The project has three volunteering strands which each looked to attract different 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 –targeted 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 gardens. They also wanted to offer flexibility around volunteers’ existing commitments.
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 to capture their views and insights about the collections.
The project opened 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 horticulture. The Digital Dig specifically targeted a younger audience to engage with the collections and allowed volunteers to speak about their experiences via social media and digital engagement.
‘I would like to do volunteer work in my spare time but, as I'm not close to an RHS garden, digital or remote work would be perfect’ (Geotagger)
‘The fact you can do it in your own time without someone breathing deadlines down at you. And if you want to do it in the middle of the night if you want – it suits everybody's working patterns’ (Geotagger)
How did it work?
As a pilot project for the RHS, the Digital Dig worked well because of its simplicity. It helped the RHS to understand whether remote volunteering would be a workable offer and whether it would attract newvolunteers. The project utilises various free digital tools to recruit and run the project and the team have been delighted by the response and the amount of people that have wanted to be involved. It has attracted a different demographic of volunteers to the RHS and broadened access to the archives. It has shown the possibilities of enhancing collections knowledge through digital, remote and relational projects. It has also built up a new volunteer base of people that are keen to continue volunteering for the RHS and has allowed people at various stages of their careers to engage with archive work and develop new skills.
Free tools included: Zoom, Google and Transkribus Lite. This meant that access to the project was open to anyone with access to a computer and attracted a wide range of participants. It was particularly notable that the project attracted a pool of international volunteers as both transcribers and geotaggers.
The volunteer offers and training were deliberately quite different so that the RHS could evaluate their impact to help inform future projects. Training was provided for transcribers over Zoom as well as a handbook and recorded video training. Geotaggers were provided with emailed instructions. The Digital Ambassadors had their training in person. A Slack channel was set up so that transcriber volunteers could query issues, share comments and help each other - this worked well for those that wanted to engage with it.
‘Since my involvement with the digital dig I have enrolled on the Oxford University Course Introduction to Garden History which I am enjoying enormously. The digital dig definitely encouraged me to do more study!’ (Geotagger)
‘Firstly, I'd like to thank you and your team for providing me with this opportunity of helping the RHS with this task. It has given me a new experience as well as making me feel that I have contributed to a real cause while at university.’ (Geotagger)
‘I just want to gently transition myself from a physical world to an online world and I think this was a very perfect opportunity for me to work with different technologies and see where I fit...I want to stop physically working so hard...Within the next five years, I may not be able to be as physically active as now so...I want to keep my brain active and keep my botany knowledge active. This helps me to do what I wanted to do’ (Transcriber).
‘I found it entirely seamless, I've had no issues at all...Karen's been brilliant, the amount of information that she's given to us, and she prepared sort of three ways of learning as well...I went to the initial conversation, and there was written instructions, then there was a video of how to do it as well. And it was all really, really helpful’ (Transcriber).
The ARA Archive Volunteering Award panel noted the excellent evaluation and it was clear that the investment in hiring an external consultant, The Audience Agency, to deliver this aspect of the work, paid off. The Audience Agency has now delivered an interim report based on evaluation surveys and group interviews with volunteers which reflects positively on the project. Quotes included in this case study are from their report, with the volunteer role in brackets.
What was the project’s impact?
The Digital Dig has had an impact on expanding the RHS volunteering offer. Through internal advocacy another department has already expressed interest in developing a remote volunteering offer for the herbarium collection.
The project has increased awareness of the RHS collections and reached new audiences, especially with the Digital Ambassadors. The project has also given people a sense of achievement and the newly launched RHS digital collections portal https://collections.rhs.org.uk/ already has some of the transcribed catalogues online.
Digital ambassadors visiting RHS Wisley
‘I enjoyed the geomapping and actually found it a very mindful and satisfying experience. I am looking forward to supporting future projects.’ (Geotagger)
‘Today, I had a eureka moment with a nursery that I was looking at. It was from the 1930s in a place called Ashington. There's loads of nurseries around Ashington and I didn't know whether any of them had become this one. Eventually, in the archives of Britain, I found some reference to this old nursery, and that was just a brilliant feeling. You really feel like a detective’ (Geotagger).
‘Tapping into some history that you wouldn't think would be useful… thinking about history that you'd gloss over, because you just think about big events that happened, but this had a lot of historical insight about really important things like the British Empire, rationing and the history of Reading, which I think was quite important to me, because I like to see how the area around me has changed. And how historically important that is in building what Reading is today’ (Digital Ambassador)
The Digital Ambassadors created 7 fantastic short films about the nursery catalogue collection.
All the films can be seen here.
Both groups held community screening events where they could showcase their work to invited guests including family and friends as well as members of local growing groups, local history groups and owners of plant related businesses. The RHS also held an online celebration event for all the Digital Dig volunteers.
Lessons learned
As a pilot project for the RHS it was important to look at elements that didn’t go as expected and to learn lessons for the future.
Starting with recruitment of volunteers, the project team felt that the recruitment stage for volunteers could have been refined to get people on board with the project more quickly. A simpler process worked well for the geotaggers. Volunteers would also have appreciated an introductory talk about the Lindley Library to showcase the nursery catalogue collections and give more context to their work.
Whilst using free online software was a key component of the project some issues were encountered with Transkribus Lite when the software was updated in a way that that changed functionality or the look of the product. It was difficult for the part-time project manager to keep on top of these changes particularly where volunteers were working at any time of day or night on the project. The lesson learned was that good communication is always vital, especially when contact is virtual rather than in person.
As it was a pilot project some of the decisions about the transcription work evolved as the project progressed, the team identified this as a minor frustration for some of the volunteers who wanted neat answers. However, it was necessary to develop the project in line with developments to the online collections portal.
Although many of the transcribers said they would like a social element to the project, attendance at Zoom drop in sessions was low. Of the 33 transcription volunteers originally on board around 17 are still committed to transcribing but their output and productivity various enormously with one volunteer contributing 279.50 hours transcribing 611 pages. The average transcriber volunteer time is 59 hours with a return of 76 pages.
There were challenges of keeping in touch with people remotely, knowing when to contact and how to support them. It highlighted the importance of flexibility and being available out of hours.
The project certainly provided some volunteers with a sense of achievement and wellbeing.
‘Thank you for the lovely certificate I received in the post, it made me feel like I'm a proper part of the project even if I'm just sitting in front of my computer by myself.’ (Geotagger)
‘Please keep them coming, I love it! I'm here for transcribing for as long as you need.’ (Transcriber)
‘I’m so pleased to be a part of this wonderful project! All my best’ (Transcriber)
‘I had no idea of the about this side of the RHS. I didn't know much about the RHS at all, to be honest, even though I'm very keen gardener and plants person. So it's probably changed my view on the RHS. It's widened what I know, and I will continue to learn about them’ (Geotagger)
‘It's always good to do something that's a bit a bit different. Seeing all the names of the plants that there are out there, it's made me think maybe a bit differently about my own gardening...You see all these names and you think ‘I wonder what’s that like’ or ‘I wonder if I could grow that’...Something goes on in your head, a light bulb moment...It’s inspired me with my own gardening, more than anything else’ (Transcriber)
Geotaggers’ word cloud
Demographics and statistics
The Digital Dig was successful in attracting a younger demographic of volunteer. This table compares the latest RHS survey of in-person volunteers based at the five main gardens and working at RHS shows with the Digital Dig volunteers that completed the monitoring form.
The number of volunteers for each stream of the project is as follows:
Transcribers – 22
Geotaggers – 145
Digital Ambassadors – 12
The project attracted participants from across the UK and internationally. The project had transcribers based in Canada, Ireland, France and Switzerland, and geotaggers in Australia, China, India, France, USA, New Zealand and Poland.
Number of catalogues fully transcribed – 37
The tangible achievements of the project in terms of making the collection accessible are:
2,578 individual pages transcribed
2,822 unique locations geotagged
1,344 transcriber volunteer hours logged
892 geotagger volunteer hours logged
The future
The RHS are looking to embed the learning from the Digital Dig into their ongoing volunteer offer. The project has shown the potential to involve a broader spectrum of volunteers who are interested in the work of the RHS but want to be able to work flexibly and remotely. The project extension has given the opportunity for the Digital Dig project manager to continue working with the RHS to develop future remote volunteering offers. Over the next 6 months (from May 2023) they will be recruiting a further 10 transcribers and continuing the geotagging project. There will also be another Digital Ambassador project working with the Young Lewisham Project.
The Digital Dig will be showcased by the RHS as part of Volunteers’ week, highlighting ways that volunteers have supported archive and collections work. They want to continue to open up opportunities to access the collections and are in discussions to develop a transcription tool that is embedded within the RHS website. The additional Digital Ambassador project builds on existing partnerships fostered by the RHS Communities team.
Karen Clarke, Digital Dig Project Manager for the RHS said:
“In essence, we feel the Digital Dig has proven the potential of remote volunteering and we want to make this a sustainable, long-term offer for the organisation.”
The project team are:
Karen Clarke, Digital Dig Project Manager
Emily Wilkes, Digital Engagement Officer
Further information
Further information on the project can be found at:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/education-learning/libraries-at-rhs/news-projects/digital-dig