Libraries,
archives,
documentation.

For a specialised heritage collection (rare books, manuscripts, narrow thematic collection, art collection) or an institution mixing books + objects + images, CollectiveAccess is well suited. For a university or general public library with consumer lending management, a dedicated ILS (Koha, PMB) is more natural. The choice depends on the specificity of the collection and the need to mix formats.

No — and that's deliberate. CollectiveAccess is not designed as a consumer-lending ILS (catalogue + loans + returns + reminders). It is a base for managing specialised collections. If your main work is daily lending, look at Koha or PMB. If your main work is fine description and valorisation of heritage or thematic collections, CollectiveAccess is more appropriate. We draw this line knowingly: Gautier Michelin, founder of idéesculture, is co-founder of PMB Services and presented the v1 of PMB at the « Open Access to Scientific Information » conference in Rabat, November 2003. Manager of the company until 2008 then PMB trainer-consultant until 2011, he is named on the Wikipedia pages for both PMB and CollectiveAccess.

Yes. CollectiveAccess accepts MARCXML imports (with conversion from ISO 2709 / binary MARC). Migration of main fields, authority links and shelf marks. For collections with non-MARC domain-specific fields, a specific mapping is defined during the upfront audit.

The Belgium Poison Control Centre case illustrates the approach: continuous enrichment of their documentary base via PubMed imports (API or OAI-PMH). CollectiveAccess accepts custom connectors to periodically pull new publications in a domain and link them to internal records. Ideal for scientific and technical libraries.

That's precisely the strong point of CollectiveAccess: the 14 record types allow non-book collections to be managed in the same base. PRMA (Indian Ocean Historical Sound Archive) manages a heritage sound collection without being a library in the strict sense — but with the same cataloguing methods. ENSAD uses CollectiveAccess for its materials library (art-school material samples). The logic is identical to a book collection.

Yes. High-definition image storage, native IIIF manifests, embedded Mirador viewer, optional OCR via Tesseract. Public delivery goes through the Pawtucket interface (OPAC included in the suite) or a custom theme if the institution wants its own visual identity.

Each record can carry a consultability status, a reason (privacy, copyright in force, material fragility) and a release date. CollectiveAccess displays the status in the reading room and tracks granted exceptions. Useful for heritage collections subject to national heritage legislation or to donor conditions.

It varies widely depending on volume (a few thousand to tens of thousands of records), scope (cataloguing alone or cataloguing + digitisation + OPAC), and level of support. For a specialised collection of a few thousand items with public OPAC, the initial investment typically falls between €12,000 and €30,000 net. No per-user licence thereafter. Ask us for a costed scope.