Search for the Stars: New year, new project

Help us get our fantastic collection online

Welcome to our all new Collections blog! We’ll be keeping you up to date with everything that’s going on behind the scenes with our wonderful collection.

We have around 40,000 objects – everything from steam engines to children’s toys to wedding dresses. Over the next few years, our focus as a collections team will be on sharing as many of our objects and stories as we can with you, the public. It’s all about making the collection more accessible to everyone and taking the museum to you if you can’t come to us. After all, it’s your heritage!

We have two shining new projects starting this year which will make our collection more available to everyone. The first is Search for the Stars, which will transfer the records of all our objects from old-fashioned index cards to an online system. Once this is done, we will create a free online catalogue of our collection, which the public will be able to search and browse. As we’ll be going through every single object’s record to get them all online, this is our chance to spot any objects which we think might have fascinating stories behind them. These are our potential ‘star’ objects – that’s why the project’s called Search for the Stars!

We need your help with Search for the Stars, partly because 40,000 records is a lot to upload, but also because we want to know which of our objects you think are possible stars. Everyone has different interests and expertise, so everyone will spot different treasures! If you have any time to help out, either at the museum or from home, please do get in touch. We can offer special sessions for groups too, so why not suggest it to your book club, gardening group or young farmers branch?

Eagle eyed readers will have noticed that two new projects were mentioned earlier in this post. Look out for next month’s blog for more on the second project that will be bringing the museum to you in the near future…

This project is generously funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund and The Headley Trust