Redirecting within a userdir - alias or rewrite?

[lucoxade]

I have userdirs set up normaly so that users connect to their home folder at http://www.mysite.com/~username/

I want all my users to all be able to access a shared folder of resources by connecting to http://www.mysite.com/~username/shared/

the shared folder will live at /var/www/sharedfiles/

Do I need to make an alias or a rewrite? I'm a bit confused - i tried loads of alias and aliasmatch attempts but a just keep getting stuck in a redirect loop.

Please help!