Collectionthat

Collectionthat is a term used in digital curation to describe a system, platform, or approach for assembling, labeling, and sharing curated groups of items. Collections may encompass digital objects such as images, videos, articles, and datasets, as well as physical items represented by metadata. The idea emphasizes thematic organization, provenance, and social accessibility, allowing users to create collections around topics, genres, or projects, and to publish or collaborate on them.

Key features typically include: support for adding items from various sources, tagging and metadata fields (title, creator, date, rights), collaborative editing, versioning, follows or subscriptions, privacy controls, and export/import options. Interoperability is often supported via standard metadata schemas and APIs to allow integration with library catalogs, content management systems, or data repositories.

At a basic level, a collection comprises a collection object with metadata (owner, creation date, description), a list of item references, and provenance information. Items may be linked by identifiers (URI, DOI) and can carry per-item metadata, while the collection records its own metadata, licenses, and access policy. Some implementations track revisions to collections, including added or removed items.

Applications span personal organization, educational projects, museum and library curation, research data management, and fan or hobbyist communities. Collectionthat-style models enable discovery through tags, recommendations, and social sharing while preserving credits and rights information for included items.

Challenges include ensuring accurate metadata, rights management for shared items, content quality control, spam or vandalism in collaborative collections, and scalability as collections grow. Because items may originate from multiple sources, maintaining provenance and licensing clarity is essential.

See also: curation, playlists, digital collections, metadata standards, object repositories.