Volunteer/tūao roles at Out on the Shelves
There are lots of ways to get involved–big and small!
Currently, we’d love volunteers to help us with content reading, book suggestions and working with local libraries. We’re also looking for book review submissions, and writing competition submissions!
If you have an idea about other ways we could grow Out on the Shelves with your help, please e-mail us! We love hearing from young people who are passionate about rainbow reading.
Content Reading Volunteer
We want Out on the Shelves to be as accurate as possible, and to provide all the information users might need. Some information (bibliographic) is easy to find, but other information (such as identities represented and potential content/trigger warnings) often requires someone to actually read the book and report back.
How it works: Volunteers register as content readers and are provided lists of books that require content reading. They pick out books you have access to, and are comfortable reading, from our lists. They then read the books and report back. To get involved, simply fill out the form here.
New Books Volunteer
Do you see a book that’s missing from our database? We want to know about it and we want to add it.
How it works: This is a super simple way to volunteer but it makes a big impact on our database. Check if the book exists in our database, and if not, submit the new book suggestion to our database.
Volunteer to get in touch with your library
We’ve been in touch with libraries all over Aotearoa, but there’s a chance they missed our e-mail. We’d love for more libraries and schools to host events or take part in our display competition.
How it works: Visit your local library and ask to speak to a librarian, if you feel safe doing so (lots of libraries let you book time online with a librarian). Let them know about Out on the Shelves (we can send you a blurb of what to say) and tell them some of the ways they could get involved during campaign week. They can order free bookmarks, put together a display of their rainbow books as part of our display competition, and/or host an event. If they are interested and you have the energy/time, you can offer to help organise one of the previously mentioned things. The more libraries and schools know about Out on the Shelves, the more our presence will grow in those places—bringing more rainbow books to young people across the country.