#merlshopisopen : Christmas!
The Museum might be closed, but we’re not missing out on a bit of Christmas cheer in the MERL shop! Find out more about some exciting new ranges and future plans… Christmas is upon us! But here in the MERL shop, we’ve been ready for Christmas since early November. Out came the decorations, the beautiful […]
Discovering the Landscape #21: 2000 books now catalogued!
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Librarian: Landscape Institute 2000 items from the Landscape Institute library have now been integrated into our MERL library collection. All of these books have been cleaned, processed, catalogued and labelled and are available in our open access library. A small number of rare books received from the Landscape Institute have also been catalogued into our […]
Explore Your Archive: Rats in the archives
Professor of Social and Cultural History at Leeds Trinity University, Karen Sayer is our Gwyn E. Jones Fellow exploring rat control in British agriculture. She’s spent a lot of time looking for rats in our collections… The MERL archive is full of interesting animal records; as you might expect, there are papers, pamphlets and books on livestock […]
Explore Your Archive: Interview with our Photographic Assistant
Continuing her exploration of the world of archiving, Whitney talks to Photographic Assistant, Caroline Benson about her role. 1. What is your specific role within archiving and what aspects interest you the most? My role is Photographic Assistant and I deal with all the photographic inquiries and income generation. I licence images for use in books, […]
Explore Your Archive: People Stories – Jean Young
One of the many topics we will be exploring in the museum’s new displays is rural healthcare. Our latest blog by Abbey School students focuses on the story of a 1940s District Nurse, Jean Young. Jean Young was a District Nurse/Midwife. This ambiguous job title in fact entirely sums up the role; for the first few weeks […]
Explore Your Archive: Animating the Evacuee Archive
Sonya Chenery is currently undertaking a PhD project – funded as part of the university’s Collections-Based Research programme – to engage with, intervene in and animate aspects of this archive within a range of publicly accessible spaces. We are delighted that Sonya has agreed to share an insight into her work in progress as part […]
Explore Your Archive: People Stories – Kathleen Hale
Our next blog from the students of The Abbey School explores the fascinating story of Kathleen Hale. If you were a child in the 1930s, you might well have ended your day with a bedtime story by Kathleen Hale. Her Orlando the Marmalade Cat books captivated many children with their bright colours and entertaining stories, setting […]
Explore Your Archive: Interview with an archivist
We asked Whitney, one of our volunteers, to find out about the different roles carried out by archivists at MERL and the Special Collections. She started by interviewing Cataloguing and Projects Archivist, Sharon Maxwell, who joined us just a couple of months ago. What does cataloguing entail? I’m trying to make the collections accessible to the public. Collections […]
Explore Your Archive: People Stories – Mary Wondrausch
The Museum of English Rural Life is very fortunate to have close links with country potter, Mary Wondrausch. Our latest blog written by students from The Abbey School, focuses on her fascinating story. When the lovely staff at the Museum English of Rural Life told us we would be researching Mary Wondrausch as part of their […]
Explore Your Archive: Reading Readers – Francesca
For our first Reading Readers post, Francesca shows us the wealth of material she has found in the CPRE (Council for the Preservation of Rural England) archive whilst researching for her PhD. I am researching for a collections-based PhD entitled Preservationism and Development in Rural England, 1926-2016: Policy and Practice, focusing on the collection of […]