National Archives at Riverside

National Archives at Riverside Volunteer Program

Volunteers provide valuable assistance to our staff through a variety of activities, including preserving historic records, preparing them for access and assisting public patrons with research. Their work makes a difference!

Volunteers should have an interest in American history, genealogy or archival management, and should be able to spend at least six hours a week on assigned tasks. Interns should expect to commit to 120-140 hours over the course of an academic quarter or semester.

All volunteer positions assist only during our normal open hours: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m., Monday - Friday, excluding Federal holidays.
Some staff aides work in groups, while others work on individual projects.
Volunteers generally work seated at tables or computer stations.

Current volunteer projects/positions:

Archival Staff Aides	Assist us in preserving and making available the records of the United States District Courts in our area. Join us in preserving, indexing and describing civil case files. These cases document claims authorized by Federal statutes, such as violations of civil rights; claims made by or against the Federal government or its agents; or claims made by citizens living in different states.
Student Interns	We are not currently accepting applications for on-site Interns.

Volunteer Opportunities

Archival Staff Aides: Each year the National Archives at Riverside acquires several hundreds to thousands of boxes of new records from Federal agencies. Archival Staff Aides work under the supervision of Archives staff to assist with the preservation, arrangement and description of records of permanent and historical value. Their work ensures that we can provide better access to the records of the United States government from southern California, Arizona and Clark County, Nevada. Projects may include work on paper records and visual materials, such as photographs, negatives, or slides. Volunteers may unfold materials; remove foreign objects (staples, papers clips, etc.); replace damaging housing; label folders; create lists of folders or indexes to records; and other specialized tasks. No experience in archives is required for this position, just a passion for working with historic materials.

Virtual Volunteer: If you would like to volunteer at the National Archives, but don't have a location in your local area, then the Citizen Archivist program might be for you! Through this program you can take on missions such as document transcription and tagging in order to improve digital access to historical records at the National Archives. For more information visit the Citizen Archivist page.

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