Image: Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende
The Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA) is set to take part virtually in the Second CollectiveAccess User Meeting in Brazil, sharing its experience of implementing the open-source archival management software. The museum’s archive uses CollectiveAccess to present its documentary holdings online, and the presentation will be streamed live through the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo’s YouTube channel.
According to the museum, the Archive MSSA has used CollectiveAccess since 2020 to make its documentary collection available to a wider public through an open digital catalogue. The system has allowed remote access to documents produced from 1971 to the present, using a relational database designed to support cataloguing, searching and online presentation of large collections.
The MSSA says its participation in the São Paulo meeting will help make its archival work more visible and strengthen collaboration with other institutions. The meeting is organized by the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo in collaboration with the Instituto Moreira Salles and the Fundação Itaú Cultural. The museum has also said the event will include representatives from the Instituto Moreira Salles, MAM-SP, MAC-USP, MASP, Instituto Arthur Casas, Biblioteca Mário de Andrade and the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.
MSSA will appear in the session 'Relatos institucionais: experiências com o CollectiveAccess', where it will share, by video, the process of implementing the system, the main challenges encountered, the solutions adopted and the project’s future prospects. The museum describes the encounter as a space for institutions using CollectiveAccess to exchange information about implementation, data management, collection documentation and strategies for public dissemination.
In the museum’s account of the project, CollectiveAccess is described as open-source software created in New York and specialized in the management and web presentation of archives and large collections. MSSA says its use of the platform has made access to the archive more direct and remote, and that several national and international institutions have approached the museum to learn about its implementation process and the challenges it faced.
Sebastián Valenzuela-Valdivia, coordinator of the Archive MSSA, said the software made access to the archive “much more direct” and noted that participating in the meeting would allow the museum to present the value its experience has acquired locally and across Latin America. The live session will be available on the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo’s YouTube channel on August 12 and 13, 2026, in São Paulo.
