Today is the penultimate day of Volunteers’ Week , during which we are saying an emphatic THANK YOU to every single person who has offered their time and expertise over the past year to UCL’s SCAR department, without whom many a project would have been difficult or even impossible to complete.

There is a wide range of roles that volunteers can take up within SCAR: helping with events, sorting through new collections, enhancing cataloguing, assisting in exhibition preparation, helping with our media and online communications.  Throughout Volunteers’ Week we intend to share a snapshot of some of these roles with you.  Each week day from 1st June to the 7th June, a guest volunteer writer will bring you a ‘day in their life’.

The third installment is from Marieta Pirc, who has given a great deal of time to helping with the Institute of Education’s archive:

Marieta Pirc – UCL IOE Archive Volunteer

I joined IOE (UCL) Archive team three years ago as a volunteer and never thought I would still be here enjoying myself.  Coming from a financial background (very monotonous), this is a different experience for me.  Each assignment is something new and interesting to digest.

Selected copies of ‘The New Era’, The World Education Fellowship’s journal.

My current project is recording the contents of ‘The New Era – in Home and School’ journals, currently for the years 1925 to 1962 (the journal was founded in 1921 and we have issues up to 1994).  These publications gave teachers and other educational professionals from all over the world a way to communicate and exchange their ideas on helping with children’s education.  There are articles on how children learnt and played in schools in the UK, Europe and as far as Russia and Africa. Contributions are not only from teachers but also from child psychologists and other medical professionals.  The New Era also worked closely with UNESCO to help children around the world.

It is a great feeling knowing that these publications (now available via Explore and on the UCL IOE Archive catalogue) are available to be enjoyed by anyone all over the world. Volunteering at UCL, for me, it’s not about updating my CV but learning, discovery and working with a professional and knowledgeable archive team.