Difference between revisions of "Model emails to potential volunteers"

Revision as of 08:42, August 10, 2012

Model emails to potential volunteers

Editorial history

10/08/12: CSG, created page

Purpose of this page

This page has been created to provide project team members with model emails (which they are welcome to modify) to use in adverting volunteer opportunities. See Margaret Schotte's request for such models

Standard data for signature

Web: http://www.marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg

Call for Volunteers: Shortform

Dear [INSERT NAME]

MarineLives - Call for Project Volunteers

We are recruiting volunteer project experts, project facilitators and project associates for MarineLives, a project using collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of High Court of Admiralty primary manuscripts, 1650-1669.

MarineLives is an innovative academic project for the collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of primary manuscripts, which were originated in the High Court of Admiralty, London, 1650-1669. The end product will be a publicly and freely available online academic edition.

The project is being conducted with the support of The National Archives, Kew, and will work collaboratively on high quality digital images for a complete volume of the court's records, selected from the period 1650-1669.

Please contact the project team (collaborate@marinelives.org), if you would like further information, or access the project website (http://www.marinelives.org).

Very best wishes

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT YOUR CONTACT DETAILS]

Web: http://www.marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg

Call for Volunteers: Longform

Dear [INSERT NAME]

MarineLives - Call for Project Volunteers

We are recruiting volunteer project experts, project facilitators and project associates for MarineLives, a project using collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of High Court of Admiralty primary manuscripts, 1650-1669.

MarineLives is an innovative academic project for the collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of primary manuscripts, which were originated in the High Court of Admiralty, London, 1650-1669. The end product will be a publicly and freely available online academic edition.

The project is being conducted with the support of The National Archives, Kew, and will work collaboratively on high quality digital images for a complete volume of the court's records, selected from the period 1650-1669.

The C17th High Court of Admiralty in London dealt with a range of maritime and commercial issues, including ship seizures during times of war, and wage disputes involving ships' crews, captains, owners, and freighters. The court's records provide a rich source of commercial, material and social history, as well as a source of maritime detail. They cover English, Scottish, Irish, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Genoese, Tuscan, Venetian, and Ottoman merchants, mariners, ships and trade.

We are now seeking academics to join us as part-time volunteer project advisors and project facilitators (twenty to fifty hours commitment between August and December 2012). Project induction and training will be provided in August 2012, with full project kick-off in early September 2012.

Project associates, who are asked to volunteer fifty hours of research time between September and December 2012, will be drawn from interested postgraduates, graduates, school students, and amateur local and maritime historians, both within and outside the United Kingdom.

Volunteers for all three roles (project expert, project facilitator, and project associate) are welcome from both within and outside the United Kingdom. We have a particular interest in recruiting English speaking project volunteers from Barbados, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. Current team members include public historians, postgraduates, and academics in London, Cambridge, Oxford, Nottingham, Princeton, Virginia, and Brussels.

This project offers participants an opportunity to acquire and deepen their digital editorial, project management, semantic markup and data mining skills.

Please contact the project team (collaborate@marinelives.org), if you would like further information, or access the project website (www.marinelives.org)

Very best wishes

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT YOUR CONTACT DETAILS]

Web: marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg

Followup email to a responder expressing interest: Longform

Dear [INSERT NAME]

ADD TEXT

Very best wishes

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT YOUR CONTACT DETAILS]

Web: marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg

Chaseup email to a responder who has not followed up on longform background email

Dear [INSERT NAME]

You expressed an interest in the MarineLives project some time ago, and I would like to let you know how the project has developed since I first responded to your enquiry.

We have moved the project on considerably in terms of building the project team, and in our preparations to launch the project.

We now have five project advisors (Dr Stuart Dunn (Lecturer, digital humanities - KCL); Richard Blakemore (PhD candidate, C17th marine history - Selwyn, Cambridge); Dr Charlene Eska (assistant professor, linguistics/palaeography - Virginia Tech, US); Margaret Schotte (PhD candidate, C17th & C18th history of marine science - Princeton); and Jo Pugh (National Archives, Kew).

In addition to me as project leader/facilitator [MODIFY AS APPROPRIATE] , we have three further facilitators - a graduate student at KCL (formerly at Mansfield College, Oxford, 1st class history degree), a graduate student at LMH, Oxford (formerly at Groningen), and a secondary school teacher, who is an experienced local historian and palaeographer. We are looking for one, possibly two, further project facilitators, and are keen to have one based in the United States.

We have ten project associates, and are looking for a further ten to fifteen such associates, as well as a further two project facilitators. Our project associates are drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds, including an archivist at the National Maritime Museum, a writer of historical novels, an editor of a digital edition of Mozart's letters, several students at Westminster school in London, and several third year history undergraduates at Nottingham University.

The team is looking quite international with members born in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and the US.

We are kicking the project off with the core group of advisors and facilitators on Monday 20th August at the National Archives, Kew, and with the full team of project associates in the week commencing September 3rd, by web conference. We are also hoping to hold a post end of project conference, provisionally in the last week of January 2013, which all project members will be invited to attend, together with invited academics, archivists, school teachers, and public historians.

Dr Eska will be assisting the MarineLives project team with (a) defining palaeography training needs (b) pointing towards palaeographical online (and hardcopy) resources (c) helping to set editorial policy and standards (d) acting as an expert to resolve palaeographical problems which cannot be resolved in the individual facilitated project teams.

An article about our project will appear in this September's issue of History Today. I am attaching a near final proof to this email, should you be interested in reading it.

It would be good to hear whether you would like to discuss our project further by phone.

Very best wishes

[INSERT NAME]

[INSERT YOUR CONTACT DETAILS]

Web: marinelives.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarineLives
Twitter: @marinelivesorg