Handwriting, as both a cultural practice and an object of study, is currently experiencing progressive marginalization within digital environments. At the same time, materials related to graphological culture, understood as a tradition of studies and practices focused on the analysis of handwritten texts, are often fragmented across physical collections and heterogeneous digital platforms. This dispersion makes source retrieval, contextualization, and informed reuse for research and cultural heritage enhancement purposes more difficult. This paper presents Grafoteca, a curated digital library dedicated to handwriting and graphological culture, based on systematic activities of selection, curation, and metadata creation. The project gathers and connects texts, studies, and documentary materials, building a coherent information environment that facilitates retrieval, exploration, and reuse. Alongside its descriptive archive, the platform integrates a network of links to external digital portals and collections, functioning as an orientation hub connecting national and international libraries, archives, and cultural institutions engaged in the preservation and enhancement of handwritten heritage. The system is built on the Omeka Classic platform and adopts the Dublin Core standard as its core metadata schema, enriched through enhanced descriptive practices and digital curation strategies. Its information architecture is based on thematic exploration paths and cultural mediation strategies designed to facilitate navigation across resources and contexts. The paper outlines the adopted design and methodological choices and discusses future developments toward more interoperable information ecosystems and advanced exploration models. In this framework, Grafoteca is conceived as a methodological model for a thematic digital library supporting both the valorization of handwriting and the interdisciplinary dissemination of specialized heritage. Keywords: digital libraries; digital curation; metadata; handwriting; graphology
Amalia Carrano (Wed,) studied this question.