>Although I recognize that we live in a litigious society, that
>the Federal Government, especially, is a bureaucracy run amock
>and feeds on this kind of documentation, and that everyone is
>running scared of the laws, regulations, and court decisions that
>constitute one humongous "Lawyer's Protection Act" --
>
>If any of the three museums or two public library branches
>where I volunteer would require me to sign such a form, I
>would tell them that my volunteer services with them just
>came to a screeching halt.
>
>My 2 cents.   --Jim Reca

Touchy, touchy!  If handled properly, the volunteer might actually feel
more secure with this agreement than without one.  The agreement does
include the volunteer's rights and protections, and can be used creditably
as documentation for a vita.

The volunteers I have supervised in the past have worked with handshake
agreements, and this suited me just fine.  But, following an unrelated
lawsuit, my agency's managers now insist on a formal document to protect
the agency.  No document, no volunteers.  I don't like it any more than you
do, and grieve over the coarsening of our society.  And is an additional
document needed when we have so many laws to cover virtually every
contingency?  However, I feel that providing a volunteer agreement to my
supervisors is a more positive step than cutting off a valuable (and
pleasant) source of labor altogether.


Andrew K. Rindsberg                     Telephone (205) 349-2852
Curator, Paleontological Collection     Telefax (205) 349-2861
Geological Survey of Alabama            <[log in to unmask]>
P.O. Box O
Tuscaloosa, AL 35486-9780, USA
"I never let my schooling interfere with my education."--Mark Twain.