Collections management involves the development, storage, and preservation of cultural property, as well as objects of contemporary culture (including contemporary art, literature, technology, and documents) in museums, libraries, archives and private collections. The primary goal of collections management is to meet the needs of the individual collector or collecting institution's mission statement^{[further explanation needed]}, while also ensuring the long-term safety and sustainability of the cultural objects within the collector's care. Collections management, which consists primarily of the administrative responsibilities associated with collection development, is closely related to collections care, which is the physical preservation of cultural heritage. The professionals most influenced by collections management include collection managers, registrars, and archivists.

Cultural property collections require a great deal of care and protection in order to ensure their safety from external loss or damage, but they also require in-depth documentation to assist in tracking the life of the object within the holding institution. To accommodate these needs, collectors adhere to collections management and collections care standards and practices, which serve to create a safe environment for collection objects with clear and precise accompanying documentation. Where collections care addresses the physical actions necessary to prevent or delay damages of cultural heritage, collection management can be defined as "a process of information gathering, communication, coordination, policy formulation, evaluation, and planning." These processes influence decisions about records management and the collections management policy, which outlines protocols for the collection scope, collections care, and emergency planning and response.

Collection management systems (CMS) are software programs designed to aid in the archiving and cataloging of objects in a collection. Within libraries, archives, and museums. Although every CMS program is unique, there are several features that are considered standard:

According to the Smithsonian Institution, a record is "any official, recorded information, regardless of medium or characteristics which are created, received, and maintained" by an individual collector or institution. As every object within a collection must have accompanying documentation, records management functions as the primary focus of collections management, and covers a wide range of documentation and policy standards. Topics covered under the umbrella of records management include collection information management systems, collections accession and deaccession policies, collection management policies, cataloging, and curation. The lack of appropriate record-keeping systems in museums compromises the security of museum collections and threatens the role of museums as information centers. Planned and systematized management of records improves programs and activities in museums, thereby leading to effective governance and operation of the museum.

Cataloging is the process of entering informational data about an object into a collection catalog or database. This process involves assigning unique identification numbers to individual objects within a collection, and attaching relevant accompanying documentation to the item such as curatorial worksheets, photographs, condition assessments, and accession and/or deaccession information. A catalog is meant to serve as a systematic written or digital record of every object within a collection, and should at the very least, include an object description that will allow for easy identification of an object.

Cataloging is an important aspect of collections management as it provides the individual records associated with each object within a collection. Should an object be lost or destroyed, the catalog entry can be utilized as a permanent record of the object and its data. For some collections, such as natural history collections, the catalog entry for an object or specimen also contains the scientific values and research information about the physical object, making maintenance of a catalog entry imperative for future research and education. Most modern collectors and institutions utilize CMS to streamline the catalog process. For this to be effective, data entry standards must be utilized for data structure, data values, and data content, which then "form the basis for a set of tools that can lead to good descriptive cataloguing, consistent documentation, shared records, and increased end-user access."

Curation can be defined as the collecting, organizing, preserving, and displaying of information about a specific object or collection topic. The role of curating is performed by individuals known as curators, who, in many cases, are trained as subject specialists. Curators conduct research on objects, offer guidance in the organization of a collection, and select objects to be utilized in exhibitions. Curation involves the development and design of exhibitions, typically based on objects within the collection, as well as the in-depth research and writing of materials associated with the collection.

Digital curation is an extension of content curation, and involves the collecting, preserving, and archiving of digital assets associated with digitized collections. Digital assets include both those items that originated in a digital form and are considered born-digital (i.e. websites, wikis, and digitally created sound and photographs), as well as analog items that have been digitized (i.e. cataloged in digital form, while still maintaining the original physical/analog form). Digital curation, like content curation, also involves the development and design of exhibitions based on objects within the collection, which in this case, often involves website maintenance for online exhibits.