Collective Access - Providence

CollectiveAccess Providence is a web‑based cataloguing system that lets institutions describe, manage, and discover both digital and physical items. It runs on a self‑hosted server, supports PHP 8.2/8.3, and can handle a wide range of metadata standards, data types, and media formats such as documents, images, audio, video and 3D files. The platform includes features for tracking provenance, flexible search indexing, background processing of media, and extensive import/export capabilities, including BagIT packages and various XML schemas.

The software is aimed at museums, archives, research collections, and similar organizations that need a configurable, open‑source solution for collection management and public presentation. It provides customizable fields, workflows, and reporting tools, as well as a GraphQL API for programmatic access and a replication system for synchronising multiple installations. An optional companion application, Pawtucket2, enables public‑facing websites built on the data managed in Providence.

CollectiveAccess is released under GPL‑3.0, is free to download and use, and is maintained by Whirl‑i‑Gig with contributions from a global open‑source community. Documentation, support forums, live chat and a demo sandbox are available to help institutions deploy and operate the system.