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What Is the Data Model?

The Data Model defines every metadata field that exists in your archive — what shows up on documents, photographs, artefacts, audio items, video items, and at the collection level. It's seeded with archival-standards defaults (ISAD(G), DACS, Dublin Core, Spectrum) and fully customisable.

Find it at Settings → Data Model.

Data Model

Why it matters​

  • The wizard surfaces these fields — when you create an accession, the Custom Fields step asks about each field your model has defined.
  • The item review screen renders these fields — what you see when you expand a row on the Items tab.
  • The AI populates these fields — what the model extracts is shaped by which fields are active and what they expect.
  • Exports map from these fields — every format's mapping starts here.

Change the Data Model and every part of the platform that touches metadata updates accordingly.

How it's organised​

The Data Model is split by category:

  • Shared — fields that appear on every category (Title, Date, Creator, Description, Subjects, …)
  • Document — bibliographic fields (publisher, language, page count, …)
  • Photograph — image-specific fields (caption, photographer, technique, …)
  • Artefact — conservation-style fields (materials, dimensions, condition, …)
  • Audio — audio-specific fields (runtime, format, sample rate, transcript, …)
  • Video — video-specific fields (runtime, resolution, codec, transcript, …)
  • Collection — fond / sub-fond / series level fields (scope and content, biographical history, …)

Within each category, fields sit in one of three pillars:

  • Descriptive — what an item is and says
  • Administrative — access, rights, provenance
  • Structural — format, relationships, physical

Your own fields go into whichever pillar suits them; there's no separate "custom" bucket.

The default schema​

The defaults are derived from archival standards. A few examples:

Documents — Descriptive:

  • Title (required, Text)
  • Date (recommended, Date)
  • Creator (recommended, Text)
  • Description (required, Long text)
  • Subjects (recommended, List, bound to LCSH)
  • People mentioned (optional, List)
  • Places mentioned (optional, List)
  • Organisations mentioned (optional, List)

Documents — Administrative:

  • Access rights (required)
  • Sensitivity level (required, pick from a list: Public / Restricted / Closed)

Artefacts — Structural and Descriptive:

  • Condition (recommended, Long text)
  • Materials (recommended, List, bound to AAT)
  • Dimensions (optional, Text)

Each field also declares the hierarchy levels it applies to — fonds, series, file, item and so on, plus collection.

You can see and edit every default field. Deprecated defaults are hidden by default; toggle Show deprecated to see them.

What you can change​

For every field:

  • Display label and help text
  • Requirement level — required / recommended / optional
  • Pillar and hierarchy levels
  • Validation rules — a pattern, minimum and maximum length, date ranges
  • Vocabulary binding — switch the bound vocabulary, or set it back to Freeform — no vocabulary

A field's machine key, category and data type are fixed once it is created — the data-type box shows a padlock and the word Immutable. Get those wrong and the answer is to deprecate the field and add a new one.

Across the page, you can:

  • Add new fields in any pillar
  • Reorder fields within a pillar with the move up / move down arrows
  • Deprecate unused fields (hidden but data preserved) and Restore them later
  • Apply default vocab bindings — sets standard vocabularies (LCSH, AAT, TGN, FAST) on fields that don't already have one. It never overwrites a binding you've chosen
  • Reset to defaults — re-adds any deleted seed fields. Fields you've edited or deprecated are left untouched

A collapsed Recent changes panel at the top of the page records who changed what.

Who can edit it​

The Data Model is always org-wide — everyone in the organisation sees the same schema. There is no personal version of it.

Editing it needs a paid plan and the admin role. On Community the page shows an upgrade panel — "Tailor the data model to your institution's standards. Available on Starter and above." Non-admins on a paid plan see the schema read-only: "View the metadata schema for your organisation. Contact an admin to make changes."

One deliberate widening: a Member adding a field from a record they're cataloguing can do so without waiting for an admin.

Bringing in an existing catalogue​

If you're migrating from another catalogue system, you can import your existing fonds hierarchy:

  • Import collections — bring in a CSV spreadsheet or EAD3 XML finding aid and convert it to a fonds structure.
  • Retroconvert a catalogue — paste in a typed catalogue (plain text or table format) and let the platform parse it into a structured hierarchy.

Both tools are in the Bring in an existing catalogue section on this page — "One-off migration tools for populating the catalogue from what you already have." The section is visible whether or not you can edit the schema itself.

After import, you'll have a fonds skeleton ready to assign accessions to. See Importing a structure for detailed steps.

There is no way to import a data-model schema from another system — fields are added on this page.

What's next?​