Study On Development Of Voluntary Service In Archives Of Britain

Volunteerism is an important symbol of social civilization. With the development of our society, the public’s attentions are gradually changing from material levels to spiritual, and the Archives begin to play important roles in society. Britain and many other countries have carried out their voluntary service for many years, which achieved obviously effects in aspects of promoting the development of archives, saving money and so on. Also, voluntary service in archives has been burgeoning at domestic in recent years. Voluntary service in archives is a kind of innovative development in the new social environment and situation.Voluntary service in archives of Britain has a long history, and it, for now, stays a leading position in the world. In this thesis, the history of the Britain’s voluntary service and the status of voluntary service in archives will be briefly introduced; the second part will lay emphasis on the analysis of the following aspects:motivation of voluntary service in archives; genders, ages and numbers of volunteers; time and its value Archival volunteers contributed; the main difficulties of voluntary service in archives, and so on. At the same time, this thesis sums up the characteristics of the British voluntary service in archives, such as its tradition of volunteerism, public participation and high enthusiasm, active collaboration with community organizations, and so on. Also, the author selects the British National Archives’online project and the Archives and Records Association Archive Volunteering Award as case studies to make a more vivid and in-depth analysis.In recent years, though Archives of Beijing, Jiangsu, Shandong and other places have introduced a series of policies related to volunteerism, but voluntary service in domestic archives still stays on the embryonic stage. To further promote it, we need learn from the experience of Britain and other countries which have carried out it for many years. Finally, combining British experience with our country, the author put forward to several opinions from three points:the social and economic development, the problems of daily management and the actual conditions of the domestic, so as to provide references for our Chinese archives.