The Great University of Reading Museums and Special Collections #12off: It doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, does it, but the idea for a MERL #12daysofChristmas series of tweets emerged in one of our weekly social media meetings before Christmas, and our colleagues at the Ure Museum and the Special Collections jumped at the chance to challenge us to a #12off!

Although it started as a bit of light relief in the run up to the holidays (the University is closed over Christmas and the New Year, so our 12 days were actually our 12 last working days) there’s nothing like pitting collections against each other to stir staff into digging deep and coming up with some amazing images and fascinating objects. In fact, the exercise turned out to be a great excuse to browse the online catalogues, image banks, Flickr photostreams and Pinterest boards looking for interesting pictures and selecting them based on the happy chance of their numerical suitability rather than any other thematic consideration! (But I probably shouldn’t admit to the great joy of matching the number with an appropriate theme, as in the case of our Day 9…!

9 turkeys chilling P_FW_PH2_T27_14

The result was three fantastically random but fascinating collections of images, ranging from the Special Collections’ ‘4 winged monkeys’ to the Ure Museum’s ‘7 lyre strings’ strumming’…

These sets of images have ended up showcasing the incredible diversity of the collections and activities in (just three of) the University’s Museums and Collections; maybe next year we’ll have to persuade colleagues in the Cole Museum, Herbarium, Typography and Art collections to join in! In the meantime, check out the #12off collections from MERL on Pinterest, on the Special Collections blog round-up, and on the Ure Museum’s twitter feed or on our joint Tumblr  and let us know which would be your ‘star collection’!