Share Your Skills

The Westmoreland Historical Society welcomes volunteers of all ages. In fact, the Society is eager to work with high school students to design meaningful local history service projects. If you have questions about volunteering, please contact us for more information.

Help Transcribe or Index

We need volunteers who can help transcribe and index records to make genealogical and historical information more accessible to researchers. If you are comfortable reading old handwriting (or would like to learn), consider lending a hand. Most pages can be transcribed fairly quickly, and we leave it to volunteers to decide how much time to contribute. Even small efforts can be a big help.

Transcribers

• Email to let us know you'd like to try transcribing a page.
• We'll send you a digital image of a single page of handwritten text from a diary or other original source.
• Type what you see on the image; email us the text; and let us know if you'd like to transcribe another page.
• If you choose to continue, we can send up to three pages at a time.
• We ask two things: 1) please do not share the images in any way; and 2) please return the transcribed text to us within a week or let us know that you need more time.
• We'll add your transcribed text to the project file; give you credit for your contribution; and let you know when the the project is complete.

Indexers

There are two ways to help us index. One is to add tags to text that has been transcribed into Microsoft Word so that we can generate an automatic indexes. The other is to extract names and places, and possibly topics, from images of records such as scrapbooks or school board minutes into a spreadsheet.

• Email to let us know you'd like to help with indexing, and tell us if you'd like to add tags to text or extract information from record images.
• We'll reply with more information and, if you decide you'd like to help, we'll set up a time for a brief meeting (Zoom or in person) to teach you what you'll need to know.

Banner Photo: Westmoreland Historical Society volunteers refurbishing an historical marker.