---
title: Getting Started with Preservated
description: What Preservated is, how it organizes your archive, and where to go first.
section: getting-started
order: 1
updated: 2026-06-12
verified: 2026-06-12
related: [getting-started/creating-an-institution, getting-started/first-import]
features: []
---

# Getting Started with Preservated

In a few minutes you'll understand how Preservated organizes an archive and know where to start with your own collection.

Preservated is a photo and document archive system for museums, historical societies, and community collections. It stores high-resolution masters safely, generates web-friendly derivatives automatically, and gives you AI-assisted tools for describing, organizing, and publishing what you have.

## How Preservated organizes your archive

Everything in Preservated belongs to an **institution** — your museum or organization. Within an institution, your material is organized in three layers:

- **Artifacts** are the conceptual objects in your collection: a photograph, a letter, an oral history recording, a map. Each artifact carries the descriptive metadata your visitors see — title, date, creators, subjects, places, and rights.
- **Assets** are the digital files behind an artifact: the original scan, an access copy, a transcript. One artifact can have many assets.
- **Collections** group artifacts however you like — by donor, by subject, by exhibit — and control who can see them.

:::tip
You don't need perfect metadata to start. Import your files first; Preservated's AI analysis can draft titles, descriptions, and dates that you review and refine later.
:::

## What happens to your files

When you add a file, Preservated:

1. Stores the original master untouched in durable cloud storage.
2. Extracts technical metadata (dimensions, camera EXIF, duration).
3. Generates derivatives — thumbnails, web-size images, deep-zoom tiles for high-resolution viewing, and format-specific extras like video proxies and PDF page images.

Originals are never modified. Every AI-generated or derived file is tracked separately with full provenance.

## Where to go next

1. [Create your institution](/docs/en-US/getting-started/creating-an-institution) — set up your organization's space and invite your team.
2. [Run your first import](/docs/en-US/getting-started/first-import) — bring in a folder of photos and watch them process.
3. [Importing photos and documents](/docs/en-US/guides/importing-photos) — the full guide to import sources and options.
4. [AI analysis](/docs/en-US/guides/ai-analysis) — let AI draft metadata for your collection.