Comprehensive Collections Management for Forward-Thinking Museum Professionals

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Argus public portal on a laptop facing left and displaying a multimedia concept

Thousands of Museums Trust Argus With Their Collections

The End-to-End Museum CMS for Digital Curation

Demands for accessible, online collections continue to grow—even though resources for curators and collections managers are often limited (or shrinking). But with Argus, the leading collections management system, museums and galleries can build ambitious digital exhibits without overextending their budgets, staff, or timelines.

Our web-based CMS streamlines the process of digitizing your collections and sharing them with the world in a searchable public portal. With Argus, you can expand your reach and create immersive, multimedia experiences that engage visitors both online and off. And you can do it all from one flexible, integrated platform.

Why Argus is the Best Museum Collection Management Software

Streamline Digital Collections Management

Manage, organize, and display artifacts your way with a customizable database. Handle accessions, loans, and related files with ease using a single system.

Increase Efficiency With Automated Workflows

Improve productivity with an intuitive user interface that requires little training. Live data syncing, mobile data entry, and custom workflows save time on manual tasks.

Expand Access to Your Collections

With Argus’ engaging public web portal, you can highlight specific exhibits or objects for a global audience and let users search your entire collection in a few clicks.

Leverage Trusted Collection Standards

Lucidea is a Spectrum Partner, which supports the British international reference standard for cultural heritage collections. (Spectrum is Collection Trust’s seal of quality.)

Create Enriching Multimedia Exhibits

Engage and inspire visitors—both in person and virtually—with sophisticated image galleries, links to related objects, and in-depth, multimedia documentation.

Glean Valuable Insights With Statistics Tracking

Demonstrate your impact to donors, sponsors, or grant committees with in-depth reporting, statistics tracking, and data integrations with your existing systems.

Core Collections Management Software Features

Enhanced Curation

Accessible Portal

Streamlined Workflows

Integrated Reporting

Streamline your artifact cataloging, storage, and display across formats and file types. Customize how you structure and organize your collections to enrich your visitor’s experience. Argus also makes it easy to link unlimited related images, objects, and multimedia files to artifacts so you can offer more in-depth supporting materials. Plus, handle annotations, accessioning, circulation, loans, and other curation tasks—all from a unified, flexible platform.

Core features and capabilities include:

Manage accession, inventories, and locations
Store and connect multimedia, multi-language files
Create detailed records that include metadata, related content… and more
Easily attach related multimedia to records

Let visitors, researchers, or staff explore your collection with powerful search options (including Google search discovery) via an online portal. With Argus, staff can work anywhere, anytime, from a mobile device, whether they need to record data, check the condition of objects on site, or do inventories on the go. Visitors can explore exhibits using mobile devices—either online or in-person—whether you want to highlight special exhibits or share curated collections.

Core features and capabilities include:

Highlight specific items or create a featured collection
Expose content to search engine queries with Google site mapping
Offer full-text search of readable documents
Restrict public access to records or specific fields

Argus’ customizable, automated workflows make manual tasks—like updating information or handling research requests—more efficient. Our intuitive, easy-to-use interface minimizes training time for your team. With dynamic updating, when data is changed in the back end, it’s automatically refreshed in the public portal (with no exports or connectors needed). Plus, built-in configuration settings let you add new content fields, modify workflows, or manage roles and permissions—without relying on IT or programmers.

Core features and capabilities include:

Import Data via CSV
Clean up data with bulk search-and-replace
Manage and assign research requests
Automatically pull in data and assets using an API
Speed up search with simplified navigation and data entry

Make showing the value of your collection easier with Argus’ comprehensive statistics tracking. See the history of each object (including accessions, loans, and exhibits), look up donor information, collection value, and more. The Argus API also lets you connect collections management data with membership tools and financial systems for streamlined reporting. Track changes in your system with audit trails so you can see who’s made changes and set what information specific users can see for ultimate control of your data.

Core features and capabilities include:

Track visitor preferences and portal usage
Export data to CSV as needed
Schedule reports to run automatically
View audit trails for user actions and changes
Real-time data integrations with existing IT systems

The Argus Platform: Extensible, Secure, and Supported

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Configurable. Customize aspects of the system to your organization’s needs—without IT or developer support required.

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Easy-to-use. Our intuitive interface and customized workflows make training all of your users quick and easy.

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Accessible. Meet accessibility standards (508, WCAG) with screen readers, audio display units, and more for patrons and users.

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Secure. Your data is always safe thanks to our user permissions, secure hosting, TSL encryption, SOC2 certification, and more.

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Integrated. Connect ArchivEra to your existing systems or external databases through our API capabilities.

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Fully Supported. Receive a lifetime of free, 24/7 technical support from our in-house experts and continuous platform updates.

Museum Collections Management Software Success Stories

28,000

Artifacts Documented

“For every collections management challenge we have there is a solution within Argus because it is so flexible and adaptable. Our collection has never been better organized. It has taken everything we do to another level, whether that’s creating a new display, locating items, or in how we work with the collection.”

Jason Beck
Curator
The BC Sports Hall of Fame

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25,000

Artifacts Managed

The great thing about Argus is that there are so many possibilities and tools. And because you have the tools, you are free to think about new ways to make the system work better and better to suit your museum’s unique needs.”

Adam Pollard
Curator of Collection
The Woodstock Museum National Historic Site

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Hours

of Time Saved on Training

“The software is visually appealing and easy to navigate. We find new ways to navigate and use our data on a daily basis. Argus has functionalities that simplify and guide our actions. We are very pleased with our decision to integrate Argus into our workflow.”

Elizabeth Holmes
Senior Registrar
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West

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Essentia Program: Enterprise-Level Solutions Made for Smaller Teams

Lucidea’s archival collections management software can support all kinds of organizations, whether you’re large, small, or somewhere-in-between. The Essentia Program gives small-but-mighty teams access to our most valuable features and functionality—but without all the bells and whistles—at a price you can afford.

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