Created by society members in the first half of the 20th century, the Great Card Index is made up of over a million handwritten cards. Each containing various items of genealogical information extracted from sources such as parish registers, marriage licenses, will indexes, monumental inscriptions and unique items in the Society’s collections. The cards have been digitised and volunteers extract information from them to make them digitally searchable. This project will make this resource available and searchable online for the first time since its inception over a century ago.

We’re now up to surnames beginning with H and we’re delighted to see card images and index entries for surnames A to C added to our collections system, SoG Explore.

We’re currently looking for volunteers who would like to work from home or on-site. If you’ve used spreadsheets and or Dropbox before that would be an advantage (but don’t worry if you haven’t, we can teach you!) 

It's an indexing project with a twist and volunteers working on it tell us that this project is better than sudoku for keeping the mind sharp!

The Pedigree Rolls are a collection of about 300 boxes containing about 20,000 rolled family tree images, donated to the Society over its 100 year plus existence, which have all recently been digitally scanned. They range from rough working trees to beautiful, artistic pedigrees. We are now transcribing each one, using standard family tree indexing software, and are uploading the images with a detailed, searchable index to our online collection. The finished project will add every name to SoGExplore and make the collection available online for the first time. You can see a small preview sample here.

We are looking for volunteers who are already proficient users of family history software to record their own family history. You will need to interpret a wide of pedigrees and sometimes read challenging handwriting. You don’t need to be a member and you will be working from home so it doesn’t matter where in the world you live. You would work independently, using your own software and at your own pace but we need you to commit to a minimum of  three hours a week and be able to return completed batches of files within about a month.

You’ll get full training and support and we keep in touch regularly via Zoom to share news and experience. This is an exciting opportunity to join us in making this unique material available online for the first time.

We have many digitised copies of typescript index resources in SoG Data Online such as parish registers and monumental inscriptions which require indexing so names can be found by researchers more easily. This indexing has a particular emphasis on resources that are not alphabetically arranged.

We have been particularly working on indexing poll books, monumental inscriptions, burials and christenings which are now complete and we're now working on marriages. We are seeing indexes going online into the new collections system, SoG Explore, which is very satisfying.

This project is for SoG members only, since resources are accessed via member login. Previous use of spreadsheets is an advantage. There’s lots of support information available including our volunteer forum. So, it doesn’t matter where you live in the world you can still take part and access support.

Volunteers working on this project are all members of the Society who are interested in improving access to resources for other researchers so there’s lots of opportunity to learn more about the society and family history.

The SoG events programme seeks to educate and entertain family historians, providing opportunities to learn how and where to research as well as about the lives of our ancestors.  Our events are also social occasions where genealogists can chat with like-minded people. Since 2020 our events programme has been online reaching SoG members and family historians around the world.

Our online events volunteers are the face of the Society, providing a friendly welcome to attendees and helping anyone technical difficulties using Zoom. They open the Zoom meeting and greet the speaker, admit the attendees using a provided register and read out questions at the end of the talk.

We also host walks and visits in London. Volunteer leaders for these events greet the attendees and check them off on a list.  They liaise with the guide and shepherd the group. As most events will be streamed over Zoom, and on occasion the speaker may be remote, it would be helpful to have some knowledge of using Zoom, but on-site staff may be able to help with this. 

Events volunteers are part of a small, supportive and friendly team. They can choose to host as many or as few events each month as they wish.  Events volunteers are able to book free places on all events that they host, and get to know members from around the world.

Our library is open to members and the public on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays where members and the general public can book a space to come in and access our records. We are currently looking for volunteers who can support our general library duties across those days. General duties include shelving, shelf checking, labelling and tagging books, data entry and basic scanning.

If you have previously worked in a library that would be a bonus but we will need people with basic computer skills and available from 10:30 to 16:00 on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. This volunteering opportunity is only available on-site at our Wharf Road library.

We’ve had lots of students volunteer with us and understand you may only have a short period of time to volunteer with us. So, we are introducing student specific opportunities where you can let us know how long you would like to work with us and your skills. We’ll then suggest a project which matches your skills and the time you have available. If you have a passion for genealogy or an interest into family history, this is a great way to learn more and gain hands-on experience.