How may I store contact methods (or similar typed data with different fields) in a normalized way?

Like you, I've seen more than my share of contact information database designs. I think yours is pretty reasonable, and locating the Key column separately from the *Method tables is a nice touch, allowing grouping of "home" e-mail and postal addresses to be grouped after a fashion.

There is a name for this pattern. It's called "specialization generalization".

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