Cultural Heritage - Photo Archives - Licensing

Turn historical collections into searchable, licensable assets.

Catalog photos, documents and audiovisual records with rich metadata. Serve them as watermarked previews, sell HD originals under clear licensing, and keep a full audit trail of every access and download.

IIIF Deep-zoom viewer
Dublin Core + custom schemas
TB-scale Storage ready
Full-text search
HD delivery
Watermark
The problem

Heritage collections lose value when they stay offline

Cabinets full of photos, contact sheets and documents nobody can find, license or pay for is dead capital.

๐Ÿ“ฆ

Inaccessible originals

Physical-only archives mean researchers travel to read fragile materials, and you lose revenue every time a request gets declined.

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No discoverability

Without metadata and search, even digitized scans get buried in folders. Journalists, publishers and historians give up after one try.

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Leaky licensing

Watermark-free previews get reused without payment. Orders happen over email. Auditors and rightsholders cannot trace a single download.

The solution

A public portal in front. A controlled vault behind.

Researchers discover. Buyers license. Archivists curate. Auditors trace. Everyone works against the same metadata.

10x faster catalog search
24/7 public access portal
100% licensed downloads
TB+ storage tier
Core modules

12 modules. Built for archivists, not just developers.

Every module respects archival conventions: hierarchy, provenance, finding aids and access restrictions.

01

Hierarchical Collections

Fonds, series, sub-series and items with parent-child navigation, breadcrumbs and configurable arrangement.

02

Metadata Schema

Dublin Core and EAD out of the box; add custom fields per collection. Controlled vocabularies and authority records.

03

Digital Object Storage

Originals, archival masters, web derivatives and pyramidal tiles - stored on S3-compatible buckets with checksums.

04

Watermark Engine

Dynamic, per-user watermarks on previews. Cannot be removed without ordering a licensed copy.

05

IIIF / Deep-Zoom Viewer

OpenSeadragon viewer with IIIF Image API - zoom into large maps and historical photos without downloads.

06

Public Portal & Search

Bilingual portal with faceted search, browse by collection, saved queries and shareable record links.

07

Orders & Licensing

Editorial, commercial and exclusive license tiers with priced HD delivery and signed-PDF license certificates.

08

Payments & Invoicing

Card, bank transfer, cash on collection. Fiscalized invoices when required. Multi-currency support.

09

Researcher Accounts

Reading room requests, project workspaces, citation export and reason-of-use tracking for restricted records.

10

Conservation & Provenance

Accessions, location moves, condition assessments and conservation interventions logged against each object.

11

Reports & Statistics

Usage by collection, top searches, revenue per license type, researcher activity and government reporting exports.

12

Admin & Audit

Role-based access, restricted records, download audit trails and full-history versioning of every metadata change.

Integrations

Standards-first. No vendor lock-in.

Built on open archival standards so your records outlive any single platform.

Dublin Core
EAD / EAC-CPF
IIIF Image API
OAI-PMH
METS / MODS
S3 Storage
OCR / Tika
Stripe / Bank
AL Fiscalization
Elasticsearch
CSV / XML
SSO / SAML
Viewer & Watermark

Show enough to sell. Protect enough to keep value.

Researchers explore your archive at the resolution they need. Anyone trying to grab an image gets a per-user watermark. Paying customers get a clean HD original under a signed license.

  • IIIF deep-zoom on photos, maps, manuscripts and posters
  • Per-user, per-session watermark on every preview
  • Right-click and hotlink protection with signed URLs
  • License certificate generated as a signed PDF
See the Viewer Live
Security & Compliance

National-archive grade access control.

Restricted records, classified series and rights-cleared collections live alongside public ones - with permissions that actually hold.

  • Granular RBAC at fond, series and item level
  • Reason-of-use capture for restricted research requests
  • Signed download URLs with short TTL and per-user binding
  • Full version history of every metadata change
  • Checksums & fixity to detect bit-rot on archival masters
  • GDPR-aware handling of personal data in records
Deployment Options

From a single museum to a national archive.

Pick the model that matches your IT policy and storage size.

Fastest

SaaS (managed)

We host, back up and monitor. You curate. Best for small museums and starting collections.

  • Go-live in weeks
  • EU storage
  • Daily backups
Sovereign

On-Premise

Inside the institution, on your servers. Best for national archives and classified records.

  • Air-gap capable
  • NAS / SAN integration
  • Local backups
Flexible

Hybrid

Public portal in the cloud, archival masters on-prem. Best for outreach without exposing originals.

  • Public/private split
  • Derivative sync
  • Disaster recovery
FAQ

Questions archivists and procurement ask first

Drop the rest in the form below - we will respond within one business day.

What metadata standards do you support?

Dublin Core and EAD are supported out of the box, and we let you extend the schema with custom fields per collection. CSV/XML/JSON imports are first-class - large legacy catalogues can be loaded in batches.

How do paid orders and licensing work?

Researchers browse watermarked previews and place orders for HD files or print-ready scans. The system handles pricing, currency, licensing terms (editorial, commercial, exclusive), invoice generation and delivery - with full audit trails for every download.

Can the public portal be branded?

Yes. Colors, logo, fonts, footer, terms pages and the catalogue UX are fully themed. The portal is bilingual EN/SQ by default and additional languages can be added.

What about provenance and conservation tracking?

Every object has an audit log of accessions, location moves, condition assessments and conservation actions. Restricted records and access requests are gated by role and reason-of-use.

Do you support IIIF and image zoom?

Yes. We generate pyramidal tiles and serve a IIIF Image API endpoint with an OpenSeadragon-based viewer for deep zoom on historical photos, maps and large-format scans.

How is the system priced?

Fixed implementation fee per collection volume and modules selected, plus an annual support plan. Storage is sized to your archive (TB tier). Request a quote for a tailored proposal.

Request a Demo

See your collection running in the system.

Send us a sample of your catalog (CSV or XLSX) and we will run a 45-minute walkthrough using your records, your collections and your licensing rules.

Sample-data walkthrough - NDA on request - No spam