Digital Asset Management for Museums The #1 DAM for preserving and sharing cultural heritage

Fotoware gives registrars and exhibition managers full control of digital assets — with seamless access, metadata precision, and integrations your team will love.

check Find any file and its data in seconds
check Simplify access for staff, partners & the public
check Control rights, licenses, and metadata

Book a meeting DAM Best Practices for Museums

Museum artifact objects in a digital asset management interface

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Outdated and duplicated files create confusion

When teams work from their own folders or rename files ad hoc, version control disappears. The wrong files get used, duplicated, or lost entirely.
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Bottlenecks slow everything down

When access depends on one person — or one specific drive — work stalls. If that person is out of office, so is your workflow.
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Unclear rights = hesitation or risk

When it’s unclear how an asset can be used, or where rights and credit info is stored, teams hesitate. Is it cleared for public use? Does it need a copyright notice? Without confidence, decisions slow down or worse, mistakes slip through.

Organize & search your digital artifacts

Instantly find the right asset with connected metadata
Automate processes

Automate sharing, approvals, and project-specific tagging
Collaborate & share - securely

Keep sensitive content secure within the team while securely sharing segments with externals

✔️ Locate exactly what you need — plus everything connected to it

Search by keyword, metadata, or filter — and instantly surface the correct asset, usage rights, context, and related materials. In the back, structured tagging and controlled vocabularies keep everything consistent, so your entire ecosystem stays searchable, accurate, and up to date.

Arrowhead with metadata - origin date, object ID, provenance, condition, material, color, motif

✔️ Standardize metadata with controlled vocabularies

Apply consistent, structured tags across your collections using controlled vocabularies — so everyone use the same terms when describing assets. That means more accurate search, fewer duplicates and a reliable source of truth your whole team can trust.

✔️ Protect institutional knowledge with controlled access

Keep your collections organized and protected — even as teams grow or change. Access control defines who sees what — keeping sensitive content within the team while sharing securely with other departments and external partners. No more accidental deletions, version chaos, or permission headaches.

✔️ Simplify workflows between departments and external partners

Collaborate efficiently across teams and partners with structured, automated processes, self-service access, and easy file sharing.

✔️ Enable seamless virtual exhibitions or remote curation

Use your DAM as the central hub — organize assets using metadata, integrate with your websites, and keep metadata connected — to support digital-first curation.

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“Our DAM system is an important part in the digitization flow of the museums, helping with everything from automation of new assets to distribution of assets to external parties.”

Rikard Nordström - DAM System Administrator

National Historical Museums of Sweden

"Fotoware has expanded our potential, broadened our user base, and allowed for rapid growth of our collection."

Stephanie Tuszynski - Director of the Digital Library

White House Historical Association

“Fotoware's streamlined, tailored workflows significantly enhance our project management and collaboration efficiency. By adding unique metadata to assets enables filtering based on project relevance, assets are precisely organized and available to the project stakeholders. "

Rune Egenes - Photographer

The Norwegian Petroleum Museum

“Processes that had previously taken hours of people’s time, running around and chasing people, can now be done in a matter of minutes.”

- Former Director of IT

San Francisco Ballet

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Powerful features to preserve cultural heritage

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Custom metadata

Organize digital assets the way your institution thinks about collections
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AI-powered autotagging

Populate assets with relevant data in seconds, ensuring that files are always up to date with little manual work.
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Advanced search

Provide access to assets to your team, organization, and external parties without bottlenecks
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Access control

Manage roles and permissions across departments and partners with granular access control
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Automated workflows

Automate ingest, tagging, approvals, and publishing to speed up workflows
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Integrations & APIs

Integrate with your collection management systems like MuseumPlus, CollectionSpace, TMS, and other systems
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Rights & license control

Ensure assets are used appropriately with metadata that captures usage rights and license info.
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Built-in Master Data Management

Maintain one authoritative version of each data point — from tags and roles to object IDs and rights metadata - to prevent duplication, enforce controlled vocabularies, and support structured, relational metadata at scale.

How it works - before and after: How Queensland Museum brought 14 million artifacts into the digital age

Before Fotoware: A fragmented system across five campuses

The museum faced a massive challenge: managing 14 million artifacts across multiple sites, teams, and systems. Collections were siloed, metadata was inconsistent, and sharing files with researchers or partners was time-consuming and error-prone.

close Siloed collections
close Disconnected workflows between campuses
close Difficulty enforcing metadata standards
close Bottlenecks in access and rights management

After Fotoware: One DAM platform, connected heritage

The museum centralized its asset management across all five campuses. Metadata was standardized, user roles were defined, and integrations connected the DAM to other institutional systems. Teams now collaborate seamlessly — and researchers can access what they need, faster than ever.