Collection management & digitisation

From dusty ledgers to a living digital archive.

CollectWith turns photos, scans, spreadsheets and handwritten notes into structured, searchable records. AI does the typing — your experts keep the final say.

Join the pilot programme
  • Free pilot with your own objects
  • Open export formats — no lock-in
  • Human approval on every record
The CollectWith dashboard showing collections, objects and a review queue

Speaks the language of heritage data

  • Dublin Core
  • Europeana EDM
  • IIIF
  • JSON-LD
  • Excel & CSV
  • PDF catalogue

The challenge

Most collections are bigger than their catalogue.

Every institution knows the backlog: objects in storage that nobody can search, find or share. Cataloguing by hand is slow, expensive and depends on knowledge that is hard to replace.

The backlog keeps growing

Thousands of objects wait for a record while staff time goes into copying data from one form into another.

Knowledge trapped on paper

Provenance lives in handwritten ledgers, old index cards and the memory of long-serving colleagues.

Data scattered everywhere

Spreadsheets, folders and legacy databases — each with its own fields, none of them talking to each other.

AI extraction

From raw to catalogued in minutes, not days.

Upload a scanned ledger page, a photo or a document. CollectWith reads it, understands the context and proposes a structured record — every field with a confidence score.

Handwritten museum ledger page from 1897 describing a bronze plaque of a standing figure
Reading document…

AI-assisted contextual reasoning active

How it works

Cataloguing that feels like a conversation.

Staff describe objects the way they think. CollectWith turns that into rigorous, standardised data.

Selecting source files for ingestion in CollectWith Extracted data with confidence scores in the CollectWith workspace AI Insight asking the curator to verify a conflicting acquisition date An approved object record inside a collection

Product tour

One calm workspace for your entire collection.

Designed together with curators — for people who care about objects, not data entry.

Know the state of your collection at a glance

  • Collections, objects and pending reviews in one view
  • A metadata quality score shows where to focus next
  • The review queue flags uncertain attributions and possible duplicates
Know the state of your collection at a glance

Features

Bring everything in. Take everything out.

Data ingestion

Import existing records and media into one unified digital archive.

  • Photographs High-resolution object captures
  • Scanned records Digitised paper archives
  • PDF & Word Research, reports and declarations
  • Spreadsheets Inventory lists in Excel or CSV
  • Legacy records Original ledgers and provenance files
  • Free text Unstructured curatorial notes

Export & integration

Open, standards-based output — your data always stays yours.

  • PDF catalogue Print-ready, with images
  • Excel & CSV Tabular data for any system
  • JSON-LD Linked data for the semantic web
  • Europeana EDM Europe’s cultural heritage portal
  • IIIF manifest Interoperable image delivery
  • Metadata mapping Dublin Core compliant by default

Who it’s for

Built for everyone who looks after objects with a story.

Museums & galleries

Clear the cataloguing backlog and prepare collections for online publication.

Archives & libraries

Turn ledgers, index cards and documents into searchable records.

Private collections & estates

Document heirlooms and private holdings for insurance, inheritance and loans.

Auction houses & dealers

Write consistent object descriptions and provenance files faster.

Universities & research

Structure study collections and share them as linked open data.

Foundations & corporate art

Keep an auditable, exportable inventory of every work you own.

Trust & control

AI assists. Experts decide.

CollectWith is built around academic rigour and institutional responsibility.

AI Insight asking the curator to verify a conflicting acquisition date
  • Human approval, always

    The AI suggests — only your team can approve and publish a record.

  • Transparent confidence

    Every extracted field shows how certain the system is, so you know what to check.

  • Conflict detection

    Contradicting dates or sources are flagged instead of silently overwritten.

  • Audit trail

    Exports are logged as part of the permanent institutional record.

  • Secure exports

    Password-protected archives and optional digital signatures.

  • No lock-in

    Open standards like Dublin Core, EDM and IIIF keep your data portable.

Founding partner programme

Help us shape CollectWith — and get it first.

The software is in active development. We are inviting a small group of museums, archives and collectors to pilot it with their own objects.

Apply for the pilot

No cost. No commitment.

  • A free pilot with a sample of your collection
  • A direct line to the founders — no sales team in between
  • Influence the roadmap with your real workflows
  • Founding-partner pricing at launch

The team

Meet the people building CollectWith.

A developer and a designer who believe cultural heritage deserves better tools. When you talk to us, you talk to the people who write the code and design the screens.

Nicolas Costa da Silva
Nicolas Costa da Silva Co-founder · Lead Developer
Sara Bel Alfonzo
Sara Bel Alfonzo Co-founder · Head of Design

FAQ

Questions we hear often.

Is CollectWith already available?

CollectWith is in active development. Through our pilot programme, selected institutions and collectors get early access and help us shape the final product.

Do we have to replace our current collection management system?

No. CollectWith works alongside your existing tools: import what you already have and export to standard formats your current system can read.

Does the AI make decisions on its own?

Never. The AI proposes structured data with confidence scores and flags conflicts. Every record is reviewed and approved by a person on your team.

Which files can we upload?

Photos (JPG, PNG), scans, PDF and Word documents, Excel and CSV spreadsheets and free-text notes — including photographed handwritten ledger pages.

Which export formats are supported?

PDF catalogue, Excel (.xlsx), CSV, JSON-LD, Europeana EDM (XML) and IIIF manifests, with metadata mapped to Dublin Core.

What about data protection?

We design CollectWith with the GDPR in mind. Your collection data belongs to you, is never sold and can be exported in full at any time.

What will it cost?

The pilot is free of charge. We will share pricing well before launch, and pilot partners receive preferential founding-partner terms.

Contact

Let’s talk about your collection.

Tell us a little about your collection and what you need. We will get back to you within two working days.

What happens next

  1. 1We reply personally within two working days.
  2. 2A 30-minute call to understand your collection and workflow.
  3. 3If it’s a fit, we set up a free pilot with your own objects.

Prefer email? collectwith@gmail.com

I’m interested in

Prototype preview — the product is in active development.