We are delighted to announce that our new website for The Collections Trust’s Find an Object service is now live.
The Collections Trust is an independent UK organisation that works with museums, libraries and galleries to improve the management and use of their collections. Its Find an Object service, delivered in partnership with the Museums Association, helps museums rehome objects they no longer need, diverting them from potential landfill and giving them a new lease of life in other collections.
In many ways, this was the perfect project for us at Root, where sustainability is a driving force. The new platform replaces the previous Find an Object website and forms an important part of the ethical disposals process, as well as giving museums a more flexible, user-friendly way to list and find objects available for transfer to other museums and public organisations.
Users can create an account, upload objects, search available listings, save favourite objects and searches, and make enquiries directly through the site. The platform also supports speculative requests, helping museums share what they are looking to acquire as well as what they need to rehome.
Behind the scenes, the website includes a number of more advanced features designed to make the process smoother for museum teams. These include bulk CSV uploads, integration with the Museum Data Service API, searchable listings, location-based browsing, enquiry tracking and exportable audit logs.
As with every Root project, performance and sustainability were central to the build. The site was designed to load quickly and efficiently, with appropriately sized and compressed images, selective JavaScript loading, lazy-loaded media, web-safe fonts and optimised green hosting.
The result is a fast, functional, low-carbon website that supports an important purpose: helping museums find new homes for historical objects, while reducing the environmental impact of the process.
David Gelsthorpe, Collections Trust CEO said:
“The platform has been more than a year in development and contains lots of new features such as a new search, easy bulk uploads from the Museum Data Service and other files and a map function that shows what’s on offer near you. It will hopefully make life a bit easier for everyone who wants to find a new home for objects that aren’t treasured.”
Root’s Technical Director Paul Jardine said:
“Chris and I are incredibly proud to have worked on the new Find an Object website and we are delighted to see it being used to save many interesting historical objects from landfill. David and Arran at Collections Trust have been a pleasure to work with and it was great to team up with Jack Barber from Hello Technology again on the Museum Data Service API integration.”
Find an Object is now live as part of the Collections Trust website and over 250 objects have been listed by more than 20 organisations in the first month.
Museums with active listings on the previous Museums Association service are encouraged to move them to the new site before 18 May 2026, when the old service will go offline.
Further reading
- Check out the Find an Object website.
- To learn more about the project and our low-carbon approach, take a look at our Find an Object case study.
- For more thoughts from the Collections Trust team you can read their own announcement on the Collections Trust website.