As one of the volunteers who is running an indexing project and doing some of the indexing, perhaps I could set down some of the things that I hope that any volunteer will bring to the project. I also see a lot of other volunteers working in the Society and the types of work on which they are engaged. Firstly - accuracy of transcription. The typing or data entry has to be as good as possible, to minimise the number of corrections that have to be made during the checking stage. An e-mail that shows that the sender has not correctly read the document they are quoting does not inspire confidence in the accuracy of their future transcription. Secondly - reliability. The person leading the project needs to know when people are coming in; if several people all come in at the same time, there is only one computer workstation available for all the projects, due to space constraints, so somebody will be disappointed and have had a wasted journey. Much lower down my list of priorities is the number of hours worked or the speed of data input. Quality not quantity is the aim, and reading old handwriting is a skill only obtained by practice. While running projects, I have had several volunteers, who, for whatever reason, have had problems in getting to the Society to do some indexing. Now it would have been helpful if they had just e-mailed me to say Sorry, I cannot get in at present. Instead I was left not knowing if they were going to come in and finish the work. Belatedly, in most cases I did hear from the individuals. Another more general point is that, recently, much of the work needed requires sorting loose papers, or indexing large volumes, which are in poor condition, and, in both cases, we are reluctant to let this material leave the building. In fact, the only things that would normally be lent on special loan for indexing or transcription would be duplicate or readily replaceable material. Copying material for transcription is expensive and takes time. If you ever question our policy on material leaving the building, just go and look at the Members Interests slips, and if the surname is in the range A-B, hard luck. A member who was thought to be trusted took these for typing over 5 years ago, and, despite many requests, has not returned this unique material. Unfortunately the odd rogue spoils things for everyone else. I am also aware that many members, for reasons of distance, cannot get to London. Perhaps there is a parish register that has never been transcribed that you could do locally, and then give your work to the S.o.G., as well as to a local record office. That helps our Society just as much as any other transcription work. For example, one person in Wales has donated many volumes of his transcriptions, and yet he never comes near Charterhouse Buildings. What we do accept and regret is that sometimes something falls through the net and no action is taken. The Society should have replied in those cases where no response has been received, but please bear in mind the sheer volume of post and e-mails that come into the Society daily. Anything relating to volunteers needs to be clearly identified, and this is one area where mail runs less risk of being ignored as it is sorted into the relevant filing drawers for the person or group concerned. I regret that response may be slower than we and you would wish, as the people handling it may well be volunteers themselves. Frank Hardy