Exploring the world of the archivist…
Before we post her interviews with colleagues later in the week, Whitney, one of our volunteers, explains how she’s been delving into the mysterious world of the archivist… Hi my name is Whitney. I recently graduated from Hertfordshire University where I studied English Literature and Journalism. I’m now volunteering at MERL which is a really […]
Explore Your Archive: Introducing Reading Readers
Our Reading Room Supervisor, Adam Lines, introduces a new feature for the MERL and Special Collections blogs, finding out how readers explore archives. On a daily basis, members of the public, students and academics from around the world use our extensive and varied collections. In the reading room at one time, researchers can be consulting manuscripts […]
Explore Your Archive: People Stories – Emily Eavis
Audience Development Manager, Phillippa Heath, introduces a project in which local school students discovered how archives can be used to research fascinating lives. As part of the Museum of English Rural Life’s redevelopment, we are keen to reveal the hidden stories behind our collections. Over the Summer we were fortunate to welcome sixth form History students from […]
Explore Your Archive: Let there be drawers…
Deputy University Archivist, Caroline Gould, has spent a huge amount of time exploring the MERL archives and photographic collections to select the items which will help tell the stories in our new museum galleries. Faced with such a wealth of fascinating archive material, this hasn’t always been the easiest of exercises! For the last two years we […]
Explore Your Archive: 16 to 22 November
Next week is the launch of this year’s Explore Your Archive campaign, which is coordinated by The National Archives and the Archives and Records Association (UK and Ireland). The Explore Your Archive campaign is encouraging people to discover the stories, the facts, the places and the people that are at the heart of our communities. Archives across […]
Rural Reads Review
This October we read Common Ground by Rob Cowen; it was different from our usual rural reads and offered a fresh perspective. Common Ground is a fusion of biopic and nature writing, expertly woven together to take the reader through a piece of land that we all have experience and knowledge of; those edge lands […]
Volunteers' Voice: day trippers
One of the ways we recognise the efforts of our volunteers each year is to organise a special day out. A couple of weeks ago the team went on a trip to Wales (unsurprisingly, since our Welsh colleagues, Rob Davies, Volunteer Coordinator and Rhiannon Watkinson, will never miss an opportunity to head down the M4!) This […]
Using history to help patients reminisce at Royal Berkshire Hospital
Written by Phillippa Heath, Audience Development Project Manager One important aspect of the Our Country Lives Activity Plan is the strengthening of links with our close neighbours the Royal Berkshire Hospital. As our Audience Development Project Manager, I’ve been involved in one particular aspect of this partnership: an innovative reminiscence project using the MERL collections as […]
Consuming the fat cows
Livestock portraiture depicting prize animals (cattle, oxen, pigs and sheep) began to appear in the mid-eighteenth century. We derive much historical value from these commissioned paintings through their collective recording of the process of English livestock improvement. It was a period in which livestock was being altered from medieval to modern purposes. In a time […]
Discovering the Landscape #20: James Corner speaks at joint MERL and Landscape Institute Annual Lectures
Written by Claire Wooldridge (Project Librarian: Landscape Institute) Yesterday evening cutting edge landscape architect James Corner – renowned for designing New York’s much loved High Line and the South Park Plaza of London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park – delivered a fascinating lecture in the University of Reading’s Great Hall. This was a highly successful joint […]