Docent
A free tool for exhibits of every kind

Print a card.Tap it. The story opens.

Docent makes tap-and-scan posters: a printed card with up to three rings, each one a tag to tap and a code to scan, each opening a web address you choose — an item on your own site, a video, or a page Docent makes for you.

Describe your exhibit, add a poster per item, download the PDF. Museums, flea-market stalls, garden tours, memorial walls — anything with things worth a story.

Request an invitation →See how it works ↓
What you get

The cards

A PDF, one card per item, rebuilt every time you publish. Print at actual size on card stock; the codes are vector and print sharp.

The rings

Your own links, printed as they are — your cards owe Docent nothing. Or let Docent make a story page and a full-screen film page.

The key

The exact address to program into each tag, ring by ring, at the end of every pack. The film stays wherever you host it.

Live examples
How it works

Tap to begin — or scan, whichever your phone likes.

Most phones · the quick way

Tap

Hold the phone near the small ring on the card and the page opens on its own — no buttons, no app. It's the same tap most people already use to pay at a checkout, and nearly every modern phone has it built in.

The backup

Scan

No tap? Point the camera at the printed code, the way you'd scan a menu. The same page opens in the browser.

That's the whole trick. The ring or the code simply points the phone to a web address. Behind each one you can put as much or as little as you like: a short story, a photograph, a full film — or a page you already have.

Walk me through it, step by step →Accounts are by invitation. Ask for one and you'll hear back from a person.

Docent is free and open source (MIT). It grew out of a working demonstration for a small history museum: three honorees, three cards, three films, and a board that could tap a card and watch the story open.