Sounds like you are looking for a Digital Assets Management system. I found ResourceSpace (http://www.resourcespace.org/) and Razuna (http://www.razuna.org/) very useful for similar projects - both fall into your A category.
Requirements for archival type software 1. Data/Image/possibly video.... upload/search/retrevial/edit from web. 2. Easily implemented user defined Custom Fields 3. Easy backup. 4. Low cost ... either opensource or very low cost
Hi there,
As mentioned here before, but Razuna will satisfy your requirements quite well.
It can manage images, documents, videos and audios. It will share folderd and collections on the web with access permissions and will allow you to search among the different kind of assets as well.
Moreover, it can handle metadata of all this asset. It will not only read metadata, but also WRITE metadata, also. Furthermore, you can set the custom fields for each asset type and users will have a web interface to work with.
Razuna supports different databases (H2, MySQL, MS SQL and Oracle (soon DB2)) and let's you migrate from one db to another with ease (backup / restore option).
Best of it all: It is available under a open source license for you to deploy and enjoy today. You can get it at http://razuna.org.
Kind Regards, Nitai
PS: I'm the main developer and founder of Razuna.