To celebrate Volunteer Appreciation Month, we would like to recognize Marianne Green, a volunteer in the Digital Services Division who digitizes and reviews documents, letters, and photographs requested by researchers, helping provide access to our collections.

Information volunteers answer telephone calls in the Great Hall of the Smithsonian Institution Building, or Castle, December 6, 1978, by Richard Hofmeister. The specially trained corp of vounteers handled approximately 250,000 telephone calls a year from the public. 

Gina Pragan, docent at the National Museum of Natural History, 1975-1994, gave tours for the Smithsonian in English, German, and Polish. She continued to volunteer until her death, at age ninety-three. #Groundbreaker

Longtime Archives volunteer Zoe Martindale retired this past February, after over twenty years of service.

Collection documents can sometimes have codes and cryptic text that make them challenging to decipher. Here’s a brief look at what we think about when facing this kind of challenge.

We take a look at the progress Smithsonian Institution Archives has made with volunpeer work through the Transcription Center.