CHIN has three core areas of activity:[4] CHIN was the first national organization to participate in the Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) online museums directory, later supported by ICOM.

[6] CHIN also manages the online database for Rowman & Littlefield's Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging, a structured and controlled list of object terms organized in a classification system in order to "provide a basis for indexing and cataloging collections of human-made objects."

First published in 1978 (launching online in 2018), it is North America's most extensively used "museum classification and controlled vocabulary for historical and ethnological collections.

"[7] The Canadian Heritage Information Network was established in 1972 as Canada's National Inventory Programme, originally to create a data bank, accessed through a computerized national network, and to help museums construct computerized inventories of their collections.

[8][9] In the 1990s, CHIN began maintaining a website where the museum community of Canada could find resources to improve the online visibility of their collections.