Digitalizing Data: from the historical research to data modelling for a (digital) collection documentation

European cultural institutions hold an extraordinary tangible and intangible heritage not always accessible by the public for several reasons e.g. spaces, conservation, exhibition, choices. Digitisation gives the opportunity to make heritage permanently available by scientists and by a wider public, placing replicas of artefacts of museums’ collections in a virtual context. This chapter is part of the B.A.C.K. TO. T.H.E. F.U.T.U.RE. project, coordinated by Massimiliano Lo Turco and presented in the preface of this volume. The research focuses on fifteen wooden architectural models of the early 19th century, part of the collection of the Museo Egizio of Turin. The maquettes are here denominated ‘expedition models of Egyptian architectures’, by referring to their original production. These artefacts suffered several moving outside and inside the museum. The aim of the research is to connect virtual replicas of the models to narratives and the historical documents gathered during the historical research. The chapter presents the collection as a whole, pointing out its historical and cultural value. With the aim to provide an exhaustive documentation and to create connections between artefacts and their documentation, the structure of the build database is here described. Starting from data and metadata available through the Museo Egizio database, a complex system has been created, following the CIDOCCRM standars for the information modelling. A specific attention has been paid to the strategy developed for the 3D web-publishing, considering the presence of a centred information management system as fundamental