Qi: The integrated Collections Management System that's shaping the future of arts & culture
Versatile, customisable, modern
Qi is our pioneering Content and Collection Management System, seamlessly integrating a Digital Asset Management System (DAMS), e-commerce, and web publishing. Qi revolutionises the way museums, archives, artists, collectors and libraries manage, interpret, and share their collections.
See our projects
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Serving museums, corporate & public archives, collections & other cultural institutions
Global reach
Since its launch in 2010, Qi has supported organisations across the globe, adapting to their unique structures, diverse collections, and evolving audiences. Continuously refined in close collaboration with our clients, Qi grows alongside their needs, ensuring it remains a responsive, future-ready platform.
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Selected clients
Over sixty organisations between museums, collections, libraries, archives, collectors, publications and artists have chosen Qi to manage and present their collections.
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Built with user-focus in mind, fully configurable & integrable with anything
Detailed specifications
Read a detailed description of Qi and download the specifications for later.
Flexibility and Customisability
- Entirely customisable data architecture and workflows
- Support for multiple sites/repositories within the same database
- Ability to adapt to any data structure and design
- Support for multiple collection types
- Availability of over 20 different field types
- Ability to re-use content and assets
- Includes unlimited users for a fixed fee
Collections Management
- Manage any collection, including objects, archives and publications
- Spectrum 5.1 compliant, with support for any procedure
- Ability to customise procedures and workflows
- Multilingual content and translation workflows
- Integrated shop (products, memberships, donations and tickets)
- Ability to use external authorities via Linked Open Data
- Report from templates in Word and Excel
Content Management
- Manage your collection and website with the same CMS
- Create narrative content for your collections
- Multilingual content and translation workflows
- Full change audit trail and versioning
- Publication scheduling and editable metadata
- Support for any metadata standard
- Support for any character set
- WAI compliant
User Interface
- Calendaring option for important dates and events
- Interface localisation in any language
- Ability to pin frequently accessed records to the dashboard
- Hierarchy browser for archive repositories
- Customisable multiple input screens
- Support for drag-and-drop across the board
- WYSIWYG Editor
- Web-based administration
Performance and Scalability
- Native integration with Elasticsearch 8
- Advanced multi-layered caching using Memchache
- Support for shared, dedicated, cloud and multi-tier environments
- Support for database replication
- Support for load balancers and scale-on-demand environments
- Mobile support
Interoperability and Security
- Full CRUD REST API
- Customisable support for LIDO/Dublin Core
- Support for OAI-PMH
- Granular, role-based permissions
- Support for SSO and multi-factor authentication
- Integration with SAML and OAuth
- Statistics of login history and activity
- Automatically block failed logins
- Customisable password patterns
Advanced Features
- Boolean and complex searches
- Configurable high-priority search fields
- Integrated LOD authorities, including AAT, Geonames, VIAF, Wikidata, Library of Congress and anyone else with an API
- Create stub records from external sources or media asset upload
- Mobile movements control with companion iOS App
Digital Asset Management
- Complete asset management solution (docs, images, audio, video, 3D)
- Automated thumbnail generator
- File format conversion (image and video)
- Integration with ImageMagick and FFmpeg
- Generation of IIIF files and metadata
- Upload multiple files simultaneously
- Manage complex, multi-file assets
- Display and manage file meta-data
- Viewer audio and video and hi-res images
- Store assets on Amazon/Wasabi S3 or Azure Blob
Web Publishing
- Integrated website content management
- Direct web publishing from Qi, without exporting to other systems
- Availability of REST API and Elasticsearch for integration with other CMSs
- Automated creation of friendly URLs
- Award-winning design options
Technology
We offer training programmes, comprehensive documentation, in-application help, modular front-end framework and REST API among other things.
Web browser support
- Google Chrome (latest 3 versions)
- Safari (latest 3 versions)
- Microsoft Edge (latest 3 versions)
- Firefox (latest 3 versions)
Interface languages
- English
- German
- Dutch
- Swedish
- Norwegian
- Finnish
- Any other language on request
Programming languages
- Back end: PHP 8
- Front end: HTML5 with CSS3
Database server
- Compatible with MySQL version 5.7 or greater
- Recommended MySQL version 8 or greater
Accessibility
- Compliant with WAI Level AA guidelines
Web Server
- Apache
- NGINX
Leveraging digital design that helps to shape the way we experience culture & history
Asia Art Archive
Crafting the digital presence for a unique repository of contemporary art materials
Art UK
Harnessing technology to democratise the UK’s public art
Historic Texas Maps
Capturing Texas's historic landscape through an e-commerce website of over 40,000 records