The Museum of English Rural Life on Social Media #2
In the second of her posts reviewing MERL’s social media accounts, our intern, Lisa, focuses on twitter and invites you to follow some members of staff!
I’m sure some of you already follow us on Twitter, but if you are new to Twitter, MERL’s account is a great one to follow. The tweets, usually from Marketing Officer, Alison Hilton, or Our COuntry Lives Project Officer, Adam Koszary, keep you updated about work behind the scenes on our redevelopment project, upcoming events, collections that may be of interest to you, as well as sharing the fun we have working here at MERL. My favourite tweet in this regard has to be the photo of some of the MERL staff all wearing hairnets, lab coats and blue shoe protectors when we went to visit the food processing plant at the Department of Food & Nutritional Sciences at the University of Reading to see how cheese was made, and learn more about the research carried out in the department relating to our new Wellcome funded displays.
Additionally, if you are interested in getting to know our staff at MERL, then why not check out their own Twitter accounts? Although they are their personal accounts, they all use them to talk about their work and issues that interest them. If you are a bit curious like me, it’s quite interesting to find out what projects and events people are working on, and it gives you a good insight into what it’s like to work in a museum.
Rob Davies @RustyhumidityRob is our Volunteer Coordinator. Like it says on the tin, he’s in charge of organising the people who volunteer at MERL and across the other University Collections and is always a friendly face to see around the museum. He’s also working on the Our Country Lives Activity Plan projects. He tweets about work, volunteer issues, the Rural Reads book club and being Welsh.
Alison Hilton @alison_hiltonAlison is our Marketing Officer. She manages the marketing of the museum, and is currently planning for the relaunch of the new museum next year. You’ll also see the odd reference to folk music and dog walking!
Rhiannon Watkinson @kooky_rhiRhiannon is Assistant Volunteer Coordinator. Two days a week Rhiannon works on the front desk welcoming visitors, but also helps Rob with the day to day management of the volunteers, arranges training, looks after students on work experience or placements and organises volunteers helping at events.
Adam Koszary @AdamKoszaryAdam Koszary is Project Officer for Our Country Lives. He is one of people behind the planning for the redevelopment of the museum galleries. He’s done a lot of research into our collections for the new displays and posts interesting finds on Tumblr.
Rhi Smith @UniRdg_MusStudyRhi Smith is the Programme Director of Museum Studies at the University of Reading so if you are interested in a career in museums, then I would definitely recommend following her for all the latest news.
Oliver Douglas @OllieDouglasOllie has only started tweeting recently! He is the Assistant Curator which means he is heavily involved with the Our Country Lives project, as well as being the lead on the Wellcome project.
Felicity McWilliams @redkite13Felicity is a Project Officer at MERL who has done a huge amount of research into the collections for the new displays and now knows far too much about ploughs and hand tools! She’s also a Harry Potter and Aston Villa fan so follow at your own risk!
Danielle Eade 
@danielleeade
Danielle is our Public Programmes Manager. She manages all our public events from Toddler Time to the Annual Lecture and is also working on plans for our new Welcome area.
As well as MERL, the other museums and collections at the University of Reading have their own twitter accounts.
You can find them @ColeZoology @UreMuseum @uni_RdgSpecColls @RNGherb & @UniRdgTypoColls so please explore!