Madam,

I am writing in response to the article about the Wales Audit Office’s report on governance at the National Library, which said “while 45 posts were lost at the library since 2014, volunteer hours rocketing by 70 per cent to make up the shortfall”.

I have volunteered half a day a week at the library for the last two years and, however many hours we volunteers contribute, we do not “make up the shortfall” of work that should be carried out by professional staff.

There are very clear boundaries between the tasks that are acceptable for volunteers to undertake and the roles of paid staff. Volunteering is carefully and expertly managed by library staff to ensure that the tasks are appropriate. We are not trained librarians or archivists or library managers or administrators, nor are we involved in the professional work of the library. That is, rightly, the job of paid staff.

We do, however, help with projects which are identified by those staff: I am currently one of many volunteers who are copying onto a database, name by name, rank by rank, hometown by hometown, the details of the tens of thousands of Welsh servicemen and women who died in the First World War, to create a computerised record of the Welsh Book of Remembrance. This is essentially a long, slow typing task which would not be sensible use of a skilled library professional’s time. But it is tremendously rewarding to think that the relatives of those who died will be able to trace them quickly and easily in future.

Volunteers help at the Library for many varied reasons - to give something back, to support a great national institution, to connect with others - but they do not take the work of former or current paid staff.

Yours etc,

Virginia West, Llanon.

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