Portable Data And OAA¶
OA Curator is built around a simple promise: your collection data should belong to you.
A website can be useful. A desktop app can be useful. But your catalog should not depend on any single service staying friendly, complete, online, or unchanged forever.
What OAA Is¶
OAA means Original Art Archive. It is a portable archive format for original art collection data and files.
In OA Curator, OAA is the format you use when you want to move a Collection as collector-controlled data instead of rebuilding everything by hand from a website, screenshots, or folder names.
What OAA Is For¶
Use OAA when you want to:
- Back up a Collection in a portable form.
- Move a Collection between OA Curator installs.
- Prepare for future tools that understand the OAA format.
- Keep your catalog independent from any single website.
Importing OAA¶
Use File > Import OAA Archive and choose the archive file. OA Curator will ask for a destination folder when it needs one.
Imported archives can include Collection data, Galleries, Artworks, metadata, external-site links, and files.
Exporting OAA¶
Use File > Export OAA Archive when a Collection is open.
The export wizard lets you choose whether to include artwork files and private collector metadata. Treat an archive with private metadata or files as a full collection archive, not as a public-only export.
Privacy¶
OAA is designed for portability, not automatic public publishing. An OAA archive may include private collector metadata and image files depending on the export options you choose.
Keep OAA archives somewhere you trust, and only send them to people or services that should receive your collection data.
Full Specification¶
This guide only explains what users need to know to use OAA in OA Curator.
For the full technical format, see Original Art Archive OAA Specification.
The OAA logo is used here only to describe OA Curator's compatibility with the Original Art Archive Format. It does not imply separate certification, endorsement, or maintenance by the OAA project.