Last week, the APS held its first Volunteer Work Week since 2019. There were 28 total volunteers who attended the event, putting in 564 hours of work on various tasks that help support and maintain the services of the APS and APRL.
As part of Volunteer Work Week 2022 many of the volunteers who offered their time and talents in the library during the week (Charlie Belair, Paula Belair, Dick Colberg, Thomas Bieniosek, Laurie Bieniosek, Tomas Letowski, Janet Stauss, Joseph Sullivan and Diane Sullivan) have been volunteering annually at this event for nearly five to ten years and some even longer. Joining them this year was a new face to assist with projects in the library (Melanie Rogers). Also present during the week were all of our regular local volunteers (Karen Robbins, Kitty Wunderly, Bill Monsell and Vince Costello).
While here, the volunteers who came for the week worked on various library-related projects including:
- Sorting through our backlog of donations to identify what was needed for the APRL collections.
- Sorting and processing the materials of the Trenchard donation.
- Sorting and processing the backlog of materials in the library archives area.
- Indexing journal articles to be added to the Article Index of the library's online catalog.
- Inventorying some of our specialized archival collections.
- Sorting and processing the used book inventory.
Working with the Trenchard Collection.
In addition to these tasks performed by our returning volunteers, the week also saw the presence of our regular local volunteers who work on a variety of projects in the library on a weekly basis. One of the tasks done by a regular volunteer in the library is the organizing and processing of our used books inventory. These are books that have been donated to us but that we do not need for the collection and in turn then make available for purchase. Buyers can search our online catalog to find these used books for sale by clicking the "Used Books for Sale" tab at the top of the page or by contacting the library at library@stamps.org. .
Other important activities that our regular volunteers assist us with are collection surveys of our archival materials; the repair and mending of worn materials; and in addition we also have several volunteers who remotely index philatelic newspapers and journal articles. This indexing project can be done from home, so if you or anyone you know is interested in volunteering your time as an article indexer for the APRL you can contact our Technical Services Manager Marian Mills at mmills@stamps.org.
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Volunteers Brian and Keith Christian creating circuit books
Working in the education department sorting through material
We appreciate all the tasks that our volunteers (some traveling to the APS from other states) in the library and other APS departments performed for us last week as well as those volunteers who assist each week with important projects. Anyone interested in supporting the APS can volunteer at anytime throughout the year, whether its Volunteer Work Week or not. We always need volunteers, whether in the library, with education, or other departments.
We also want to say a special thank you to Leonard and Darlene Bloom, who helped with volunteers that sorted and tabulated donated stamps and covers for the education department that provided substantial help for programs such as Stamps Teach, YSCA, and the YPLF (Jim Fabrizi, Jim Koncz, Kathy Maxwell, Bill Hartung, Dave Caster, Paul Shamel, Eric Peters, Eric Reed, Earl Seibert, James Withers, and Gerry Robbins who is a regular volunteer) as well as the volunteers assisting in the sales department (Debbie Cleeton who assisted with scanning submissions and applying postage, as well as Ben Christian, Keith Christian, and Ben Stauss, who created over 60 circuit books for much-needed categories in circuit sales), and also acknowledge all the directors who worked together with the volunteers. We look forward to seeing everyone again next year!