ArchiveBase is a hosting platform for building, publishing and operating digital archives and digital libraries, with IIIF images, transcriptions (TEI/XML), full-text search and a DTS API.
The problem it addresses
In GLAM (libraries, archives and museums) and the digital humanities there is a structural pain point: the materials exist, but the infrastructure does not. IIIF, TEI and DTS are well standardised, yet assembling an image server, TEI visualisation, metadata design and a search backend from scratch is out of reach for many researchers and curators.
ArchiveBase aims to be a platform that lowers the barrier for individuals and small institutions to launch a digital archive.
Features
- API-first — registration, search, upload, tenant creation and key issuing are all driven through an HTTP API. The GUI is a thin layer on top of it.
- Multi-tenant — a single installation hosts many accounts, and each account holds multiple digital libraries.
- Standards-based — support for IIIF (images), TEI P5 (text) and DTS (text-delivery API).
- Generic resource model — items, collections, media and annotations fold into a shared resource model, from which type-specific search, maps and landing pages are generated automatically.
- Data portability — data can be exported at any time, and the core is intended to be released as open source. Avoiding vendor lock-in is treated as the foundation of trust.
About this publication
This site is an experimental, personal project by nakamura196. Its specification and features are under active development and may change without notice.