MATRICES is an interdisciplinary project involving two departments of Roma Tre University and an institute of the CNR. The Department of Engineering at Roma Tre University contributes to the project with its expertise in computer engineering, specifically artificial intelligence and data management; the Department of Humanities provides expertise in paleography, archival science, and urban history. The Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies of the CNR contributes expertise related to facilitating access to information. The project also benefits from the collaboration of the State Archives of Rome, which will provide the archival material used to define the case study for the experimental evaluation of the solutions developed within the project.

Goals
The MATRICES project specifically aims to develop an innovative workflow for the transcription and semantic annotation of digitized historical archival sources to facilitate large-scale consultation. Transcription refers to the process of extracting text from digitized images so that it becomes, for example, searchable and accessible. Semantic annotation refers to the automatic identification of semantic elements of interest to the user within text and images, primarily in the form of entities (such as locations, streets, buildings, institutions, and people) and specific relations (for example, a person’s place of birth). Transcription and semantic annotation are fundamental to the process of digital transformation and preservation of a paper archive and represent the natural next step following its digitization.