Collective
1.01 Page
SOFTWARE SUITE · OPEN SOURCE · SINCE 2003

Collective
Access.

A relational database and web interfaces to catalogue, manage and publish your collections — no hard-coded fields, fully tailored to your project.

01
Providence
Cataloguing interface
02
Pawtucket 2
Public web interface
03
+ idéesculture plugins
Musées de France, offline, NFC…
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND · 1870
14
record types
« No hard-coded fields. Every field is customisable through an XML profile, or through the user interface. »
— CA DOCUMENTATION
2 003
Launched by Whirl-i-Gig
14
Record types
20+
Metadata standards
100+
Institutions deployed
— Architecture
01

Providence + Pawtucket — catalogue, then publish.

Two applications, one database
PROVIDENCE — OBJECT / 042
01 · PROVIDENCE

The cataloguing interface

Entry, editing and management of records. 14 object types, multi-level search, batch processing, fine-grained access control, import/export from spreadsheets, MARC, Z39.50 or XML.

  • 01 Quick, simple, advanced and faceted search
  • 02 On-the-fly spreadsheet-style editing
  • 03 Tables and statistics exportable to Excel
  • 04 Full edit history
  • 05 Built-in Musées de France procedures
PAWTUCKET — COLLECTION
02 · PAWTUCKET 2

The public publishing interface

Web or intranet publication of your collections. Multiple instances tied to a single database, deep visual integration, faceted browsing, participatory features.

  • 01 HD photo viewer, video and audio streaming
  • 02 Multipage viewer for long documents
  • 03 Comments, annotations, personal selections
  • 04 Maps, timelines, calendars
  • 05 Tablet- and mobile-friendly display
— Features
02

A complete toolkit for your collections.

8 families
01 / 08

Entry and cataloguing

  • → 14 record types: objects, lots, collections, entities, places, storage, representations, events, occurrences, loans, movements, sets, thesauri
  • → Batch edits across whole sets of records
  • → Quick add: create and link without leaving the current editor
  • → Direct spreadsheet-style editing of results
  • → Extended date recognition: « -45 Ma », « 19th c. », « around 1912 », « circa June 1927 »…
  • → Relationship transfer on deletion (e.g. Ch. Baudelaire → Baudelaire, Charles-Pierre)
  • → Free reordering of relationships at display time
02 / 08

Search & navigation

  • → Search across the whole database or by record type
  • → Advanced search configurable from the management interface
  • → Faceted browsing: Furniture > France > 15th c. > Marquetry
  • → Search for empty values
  • → Filter by creation or modification date
  • → Spell-checking and suggestions
  • → Create sets from results for batch editing
03 / 08

Media & files

  • → Full-screen HTML5 viewer with rotation and zoom
  • → Annotations on image, audio and video
  • → Streaming video and audio without download
  • → Advanced multipage viewer for long documents
  • → Manual centring or facial recognition for thumbnails
  • → Full-text indexing of Word, Powerpoint, Excel, PDF
  • → Unified EXIF/XMP metadata linked to fields
04 / 08

Metadata & standards

  • → DublinCore, DACS, CDWA, DarwinCore, EBUCore, ISAD-G/EAD, PBCore, VRACore, SPECTRUM
  • → Create and edit metadata at any time
  • → Native validations: lengths, weights, dates, currencies
  • → Multilingual entry on every field
  • → Hierarchical controlled vocabularies and thesauri
  • → Over 20 customisable community profiles
05 / 08

Maps, timelines & visualisations

  • → Display objects on a map (place of creation, of use, original museum)
  • → Timelines accepting intervals: « French Revolution », « 19th c. »
  • → Monthly or weekly calendar (hangings/de-installations)
  • → Adaptable histograms and charts, Excel export
  • → In-browser 3D viewer, no plugin required
06 / 08

Access controls & administration

  • → Fine granularity: field by field, object by object
  • → Rights inherited at collection or object-type level
  • → LDAP authentication
  • → Four layers of user permissions
  • → Every action in the database is logged
07 / 08

Import / Export

  • → Import from XLSX, CSV, XML, FilemakerPro, MARC, MySQL, another CA installation
  • → Direct import from WorldCat or Z39.50 (BnF, SUDOC)
  • → Connectors for Getty (ULAN, AAT, TGN), Wikipedia
  • → Export to OAI-PMH, RDF, EAD, PBCore, NewsML, OAI_DC
  • → Four PDF display options, including embedded PDFjs viewer
  • → Targeted export to a GitHub repository
08 / 08

Domain modules

  • → Loans/returns module: tracking, store-room status, statistics
  • → Location tracking: simple history or movement records
  • → Deaccessioning: dedicated block, filtering of outgoing items
— Interoperability

Open to the semantic web.

CollectiveAccess is at the forefront of interoperability technologies. Your data can be harvested, exported to international repositories, and enriched in real time from major reference databases.

SRC · 01

OCLC WorldCat

72,000 institutions, 2 billion records

SRC · 02

Getty Vocabularies

ULAN · AAT · TGN

SRC · 03

Wikipedia

Web services, no import

SRC · 04

Z39.50

BnF, SUDOC

SRC · 05

OAI-PMH

Gallica, Europeana, Judaica…

SRC · 06

RDF / Linked Data

Semantic web, open data

North American visitors

Based in the US or Canada?

idéesculture is a French studio. We only work on North American projects when they are tied to French institutions or partnerships — Villa Médicis, Nasher Sculpture Center / FrenchSculpture.org, Embassy collections and similar.

For all English-first US or Canada-based engagements, please contact Whirl-i-Gig, the original developers of CollectiveAccess, headquartered in New York. They are the upstream maintainers of the platform and the natural partner for North American institutions.

Visit collectiveaccess.org ↗ Whirl-i-Gig ↗
— idéesculture extensions

Beyond the core, our plugins.

We already support many institutions across Europe and beyond. Our team maintains around sixty open-source repositories that extend CollectiveAccess to address our clients' real-world needs: 3D visualisation, offline mode, specific date formats, Musées de France standards, NFC, condition reports… The full list is on GitHub.

PLUGIN 01

museesDeFrance

Plugin certified by France's Ministry of Culture for institutions with the « Musée de France » label: inventory registers (Dec 2013), decennial inventory audit (Jan 2014). National Joconde export in progress, first deployment at the Mayenne Museum.

PLUGIN 02

Offline mode

Entry and inventory checks on tablet even without wifi signal — perfect for storerooms and fieldwork.

VISUALISATION 03

meshviewer

3D OBJ viewer in Three.js / WebGL, embedded directly in Providence and Pawtucket.

DATES 04

frenchRevolutionaryCalendar

Recognition and conversion of dates from the French Revolutionary calendar.

DATES 05

DateTimeConfigurator

Define custom periods and date formats from the interface — without touching the configuration.

ARCHIVES 06

ArchiveTesDocs

Application dedicated to managing archives and paper documents in the workplace.

HARDWARE 07

NFC reader webservice

NFC reader exposed as a web service — contactless tagging and inventory checks.

EXPORT 08

conditionReportDocx

Generation of Word condition reports from DOCX templates with replacement markers.

ADMIN 09

PropagateACL

Automatic propagation of access rights through collection hierarchies.

DATA 10

attributevaluesBacklink

See how an object, entity or place is used inside a container — reflexive backlinks.

MEDIA 11

UploadMedias

Upload media into providence/import when SCP is not available.

MODULE 12

loanInterface

Barcode-optimised loans/returns interface: 100% barcode, no keyboard or mouse.

I18N 13

translate_json

CLI utility to translate the content of a CA exhibition via the DeepL API.

IMPORT 14

importCnap

Dedicated import from the database of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques.

RESEARCH 15

lutherietools

Web tools (Vue.js) dedicated to audio analysis and lutherie — research use.

→ See the full organisation on github.com/ideesculture — 69 public repositories, GPL/BSD licences.
→ The museesDeFrance plugin is listed on the French Ministry of Culture's official site — culture.gouv.fr (decennial inventory audit procedure), registered as Idéesculture SAS, Jan 2014.
Pre-configured standards & schemas
DublinCore
DACS
CDWA
DarwinCore
EBUCore
ISAD-G / EAD
PBCore
VRACore
SPECTRUM
Joconde
OAI-PMH
RDF
— History
03

Twenty years of continuous evolution.

2003

Whirl-i-Gig

Launch in New York of the open-source CollectiveAccess project.

2006

First deployments

Coney Island History Project, Parrish Art Museum.

2007

Berlin Cinematheque

European adoption and contributions to development.

2010

Structural overhaul

Greater flexibility, support for major standards: EAD, DublinCore, PBCore, SPECTRUM.

2012

Versions 1.2 / 1.3

OpenLayers mapping, multilingual support, performance overhaul.

2014

Version 1.4

DICOM/STL/PLY 3D support, import/export framework, spreadsheet-style editing.

2015

Version 1.5

WorldCat, ngram suggestions, deaccessioning, PDF overhaul.

2025

Version 2.0.9 / 2.0.11

Active maintenance of Providence and Pawtucket by the community.

01 · ARCHIVES
02 · MUSEUMS
03 · HERITAGE
04 · RESEARCH

Your collections deserve a software suite that adapts to them, not the other way round.

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