Since the establishment of its preparatory office in 1955, the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica has been dedicated to the collection of diplomatic and economic archival materials. This includes the compilation and reorganization of historical government records as well as recent collaborative efforts with institutions to gather contemporary documents. The primary aim has always been to build a solid foundation for the study of modern history. In recent years, supported by the Digital Cultural Center, the Institute’s Archives Division has successfully completed a trilogy of agricultural history projects: "Postwar Rural Repatriation and Resource Reorganization,"Frugality and Productivity: A Value-Added Project on Agricultural Extension in Modern China," and "Agriculture as the Foundation of the Nation: A Value-Added Project on the Agricultural Economy during the Republican Era (1940–1949)." These projects also enhanced and expanded databases. 

The current integrated project, “Value-Added Cold War Diplomacy and Modern Economic Archives Database Project” (2026–2028), focuses on newly acquired archival collections at the Institute, namely the Liu Kai Papers, the Ch’ien Fu Papers, and forestry archives from the economic sector. The project consists of two main components: Cold War Diplomacy: This involves organizing and analyzing official communications and personal correspondence from the 1950s to the 1990s between Taiwan and the United States, East Asian countries, and the United Nations. The project will extract and analyze key terms and historical events, building upon the existing Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives to create a deeper understanding of Cold War diplomacy, culminating in the creation of the “Cold War Diplomacy: Historical Documents Database.” Modern Economic Archives: This part continues the organization of data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, including forestry statistics, forest station operations, forestry product charts, and natural resource data. These materials will be categorized and annotated, and integrated with existing databases on social networks, resource mapping, salary subsidies, and agricultural surveys, resulting in a comprehensive “Modern Economy: Natural Resources Database.” Both databases will support scholarly research. Coupled with sub-projects led by collaborative researchers, the expected outcomes include research reports on Cold War history and economic history. The databases will be made publicly accessible to facilitate further academic exploration.

Overall, the research team will employ metadata analysis to tag significant themes, keywords, personal names, geographic data, and quantifiable information within the diplomatic and economic archives. This will align with the principles of Linked Open Data (LOD), ultimately presenting two databases—Cold War Diplomacy and Modern Economic Archives—along a historical timeline. The long-term aim is to continually enrich these databases, turning them into mature and comprehensive knowledge bases.