Rebecca Coert is an Arlingtonian who is passionate about libraries, research, and giving back. Her job and her volunteer efforts both mirror her passion. She’s been working at Arlington Public Libraries for 25 years, and currently manages the suite of catalog applications that the library uses to manage their day-to-day activity. As a child, the first time she volunteered was at a library, and she continued this tradition when she took part in Arlington County’s Time to Give program by volunteering with the Library of Congress. Through this program, Arlington County provides its employees with paid time off to volunteer. Arlington County also showed their commitment to this by taking Volunteer Arlington’s Time to Serve pledge.
When looking for a volunteer opportunity, Rebecca stumbled upon the Library of Congress’s By the People program, which is their crowdsourced transcription program. This program seemed perfect to Rebecca who “as a librarian, loves to help people find resources.” With this program, she gets to create online resources by transcribing old letters and documents into web-friendly documents that then become searchable online. She’s been volunteering with this program for five years and loves every moment of it!
Her love for the program comes from getting to see handwritten letters and notes from different eras in American history. Rebecca has learned a lot about the different historical periods her projects are in, which excites her even more to work on further transcription projects. For example, she got the opportunity to work on a project that focused on Clara Barton and the creation of the Red Cross. Rebecca was intrigued to see “all Clara Barton’s correspondence back and forth about what kind of money she needed, raising funds, dealing with politicians” to get her project started. She also loves seeing the difference in the use of language and how the handwriting looks back then compared to now.
For Rebecca, one of the most rewarding parts of volunteering is seeing how everyone pitching in a little can make a huge difference. Anyone involved with a By the People project can choose how much effort they can offer, whether that be two pages a day or 10 pages a month. Combined, those efforts make a huge difference in completing their projects.
If you want to find a volunteer project that you’re just as passionate about as Rebecca is for the By the People program, she recommends that you “know what kind of volunteer you want to be upfront.” Think about what you want from the experience and how you want to interact with the organization and other volunteers. For example, think realistically about what constraints you have. She also recommends thinking about what you hope to achieve when you give back. Rebecca “loves the idea of contributing back to society in some form” and was thrilled to find that she could give back by creating online, searchable resources that people need.