The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, which is the country's national museum, opened in Wellington in 1998 following the consolidation of New Zealand's National Museum and National Art Gallery. As a result, the museum today is home to a rich, diverse collection that includes contemporary art, historic photographs, centuries-old artifacts, natural history specimens, and much more. In September 2017, the museum launched the new and improved Collections Online, allowing visitors from around the world to explore the museum's impressive collection (which hosts over 800,000 items) with ease. When users enter the site, they will be presented with a handful of collection highlights. From here, they may conduct a text search of the collection with the option to filter results by type (e.g. object, specimen, publication), image reuse (most items in this collection have unrestricted use or are part of the Creative Commons), or collection (including art, photography, history, Taonga Maori, museum archives, rare books, and plants). Users may also restrict searches to only include results with accompanying images. The collection includes both individual objects as well as topics, which are mini-collections of related objects and publications, accompanied by contextualizing information.