A collection is Cumulus-speak for a set of records from any one catalog or even multiple catalogs. It is a way of looking at your catalog(s) – the way that you look at it at any given time. Whenever you work with assets in the record and category panes – which make up the Collection window – you’re creating or modifying collections. When you view the records in any category, you’re looking at a collection. When you view the results of a search, you’re also looking at a collection. The same is true for individual records you’ve dragged and dropped into the window – any ‘snapshot’ of your catalog can comprise a collection. A collection acts as your temporary workspace in Cumulus, and you can also save it as a file.
While a collection can contain all records in a single catalog or all in a single category, it is neither one nor the other. A collection can also contain – and here is where its advantages become obvious – the results of a search (either as a new collection or replacement of the current collection), or any records you drag and drop into the Collection window. Any individual set comprises a collection. The records in one collection may even belong to different catalogs.
Once saved, a collection file remembers the records it contains and the Record View Set used. A collection file also keeps track of column width of the Details View.
EXAMPLE: Special Project Collection
Assume that you have a catalog containing thousands of records organized neatly into categories. Your latest project, however, only requires assets from four of those categories, and from those it only requires the image files. You could first run a search to pull all image files from those four categories. Then you could select a Record View Set and emphasize the exact information you need for this project. Save the collection, and from now on you can simply open the collection containing the records you really need – while the entire catalog remains available to you in the background. You could then email the collection to in-house members of the project team.
A collection, whether saved or unsaved, is always connected to its catalog(s). When a collection is open, the catalog(s) storing the records of the collection are also open. In order to open a particular collection, you must have access to its catalog(s). If a record is removed from a catalog, it is removed from any of the collections it was in. Similarly, if you delete a category, it is deleted not only from one collection, but also from the catalog.
You can, however, delete a record from the collection without deleting it from the catalog – as long as you press only the DEL key. But if you press both Command / Control and DEL, the record will be removed from both collection and catalog (see “Delete” , for more information).
Command / 
Control and DEL, the record will be removed from both collection and catalog (see “Delete” , for more information).