In 2007, the Heritage Health Index, a study conducted by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and Heritage Preservation, reported that almost a third of historical societies, a quarter of museums, and twenty percent of archeological repositories have no catalog records at all. In addition, half of the collecting institutions in the United States have none of their collections available online. This information gap represents a lost opportunity for museums and points to a core community need.

The CollectionSpace project is focused on developing solutions for museums and related heritage organizations that want to address this information gap and re-define the ways in which collections information is collected, managed, preserved, leveraged, and published. CollectionSpace partners will develop software with an open and extensible architecture, that is community-based and technologically robust. Our goal is to produce a suite of modules and services that will provide a stable, robust, authoritative, and flexible core of collections information from which interpretive materials and experiences - from printed catalogs to mobile gallery guides - may be efficiently developed, and that can serve as a cost-effective alternative to proprietary collections management systems for museums in need, regardless of size or scope. The openness of the software will allow it to be connected with other open-source applications already in-use by the cultural sector including those for archival management, online exhibition creation, and digital asset management. The project leverages and advances the work done by Museum of the Moving Image between 2005 and 2007 on its OpenCollection open source collections management tool.

The project began with a series of workshops at which leading museum, library, and archive professionals worked together to provide insight and define community needs with regard to the design principles, functions, and features that will make the software widely effective. The workshops will be followed by a two-year development phase, during which successive versions of the software will be tested by the heterogeneous community for which it is being developed.