Historical Research and Archival Sciences in a Digital Perspective Relational Database, Data Architecture and Data Extraction in Graziani Archives Portal

Historians often struggle with organizing unstructured data, as existing metadata standards and relational databases do not fully capture the complexity of historical narratives. While archival sciences have adapted to digital environments, historians face challenges in structuring data, particularly for fragmented private collections that do not conform to standard models. This article examines key decisions in a Digital Humanities project on historical sources, including platform selection, data structuring, and metadata integration. Using the Nuncio’s Secret Archives project as a case study, it highlights strategies for standardizing, contextualizing, and interlinking data to enhance searchability and facilitate customized analysis.