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 from the Samuel Beckett archive, looking at engineering drawings as part of an engine restoration project, or exploring our photographic collections as part of a local history study. They play such a key role in our understanding of the things under our care. They bring specialist subject knowledge and shed light on aspects of archives that enriches our understanding of them.

The view of the Reading Room from the supervisor’s desk.

With this in mind, I decided it was time we shared some of the fascinating research carried out in our reading room. My colleagues and I hear about the research taking place on a daily basis, but a lot of it is too interesting not to share.

As part of ‘Explore Your Archive’ week, we will be sharing some examples. This will be the start of a regular feature on the Museum of English Rural Life and University of Reading Special Collections blogs, and through the eyes of our researchers we hope to share the potential for discovery in our collections.

Look out for more Reading Readers posts this week, and in the future.

To find out more about accessing the archives, click here.

#readingreaders

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 have all been researching which objects, archives, library material should appear in the new galleries as part of the Our Country Lives project.  It has been a key aim of this project to include in the displays more of the archives which are held by the museum.

The Museum of English Rural Life is a major national repository for archives of agriculture and rural life. The strengths of the collection include: records of major agricultural manufacturing firms; historic archives of agricultural organisations and cooperatives; large collections of personal records and journals of farm workers; company accounts of farms across England; and films relating to the countryside and agriculture.

One of the characteristics which makes MERL unique is the wealth of the archives which enrich the museum’s collection. The new museum galleries will feature many special archives items, giving depth to the new displays. During the museum’s closure period, the reading room has remained open and researchers have continued to access the huge resources, so this seems like a good time to shout about this fascinating aspect of our collections.

We started thinking about different stories and collections that we hoped would feature in the interpretation in November 2013. The stories and key messages have not remained fixed over the two years but have changed and developed which means the selection of archives has also changed to reflect the new messages. We now feel we are close to the final selection of images, archives and films that will appear in the galleries next year.

The archives and photographs will help interpret the objects, provide context and explain how the objects were used graphically. The images vary in size from A4 to a full wall. Gallery 2, A year on the Farm features an Eric Guy photograph entitled “Their midday ration on a Winters day. ”

One section of Gallery 3 which focuses on ‘Grow your Own’ features this Sutton Seeds poster from around 1890 advertising vegetables.

Poster advertising vegetables c1890 Sutton Seeds Collection

At times, as a team it has been difficult as some items that have selected and we are really keen for a wider audience to see have not been selected for the final display. Sometimes there is not enough space in the gallery to display the items or other items fit with the wider interpretation of the gallery so the archives have not been selected.

However, in the galleries there are 10 cases in the galleries that have drawers! The intention is to display original archives in the drawers. The selection will change two or three times a year so we can display a range of items and visitors will see new collections the next time they visit. There has been quite a lot of discussion within the curatorial team working on Our Country Lives about whether visitors will open the drawers. I remain positive I think visitors will enjoy discovering the archives. Let there be drawers!

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 the UK and Ireland are taking part to raise awareness of the value of archives to society and of the rich variety of content that is held, preserved and made available to users.

Throughout next week we’ll be joining in the campaign to bring to life the archives of the Museum of English Rural Life and the University of Reading’s Special Collections, revealing the variety of the collections, highlighting our favourite items, and showing what the collections mean to the people who work with and study them.

At 11am on Monday , we’re hosting a very special event ‘History on TV’ with Reading historians Professor Kate Williams and Dr Jacqui Turner who will chat about the effect of the media on public history. Is history now just another commodity? Can archives really be described as entertainment? How accurate is the new Suffragette film? And what’s the inside track on the Great British Bake Off? You can book to attend by emailing merlevents@reading.ac.uk or call 0118 378 8660, or if you can’t make it, tune in to our very first live broadcast via Periscope. (You can find our Periscope account here: @UniRdg_SpecColl. We’ll also be tweeting links to the live feed on the day from the @MERLreading and @UniRdg_SpecColl Twitter accounts)

There’ll be features on the MERL and Special Collections blog. Caroline Gould, Deputy University Archivist, will be looking at how archives will be an integral part of MERL’s new displays. We’ll also be featuring research carried out by local sixth form students for the ‘People Stories’ which will be a part of the new MERL galleries. We’ll be launching a new regular feature, Reading Readers, highlighting the research being carried out by academics, students and volunteers in our reading room, and exploring the fascinating work of our archive staff through a series of interviews.

Over the week on Tumblr we’ll be focussing on some favourite items, selected by staff and volunteers, and featuring some unusual and surprising items!

On Twitter, you can follow the daily hashtags including #explorearchives #archiveselfies #yearinarchives #archivesrock and #archiveanimals

We hope you’ll join us and share what you love about archives!