The results of the research done during the 2006-2007 period at the Central State Archive on the Patents and Trademarks Collections have secured new commitments. The Italian State Archives Department and GSES signed a cooperation agreement and established an ad hoc working group (Solar Archive Working Group) in 2008 to perform a nationwide survey of sources and create a multimedia database. The work already done in the Central State Archive’s Patents and Trademarks Collection, and by GSES in the private archives of Italian solar energy pioneers, has produced useful technical and scientific results that can provide a starting point for this survey, which might well focus first of all on sources regarding patents and trademarks contained in the State Archives and in private archives.

The work ahead for Italy’s Solar Archive was illustrated by Terenzoni from the State Archives Department at the seminar on April 4 [7]. She addressed the main aspects related to archival sources and tools for historical research on solar energy in Italy. Italy’s archives contain miles upon miles of shelves filled with all kinds of documents, information and data produced by government bureaus and agencies, public and private enterprises, and individuals. Very often their contents are accessible only by means of “traditional” systems. To consult documents regarding a particular subject, it is sometimes necessary to be familiar with, or reconstruct, the history of the institution or the biography of the individual that produced the documents, as well as the

circumstances that led to their production, drawing one to look into all the ramifications (real or suspected) of a given activity.

The archival sources are heterogeneous and the existing research tools are complex and not easy to handle, and will thus require some terminological-control tools, for instance a glossary and dictionaries of standard terms, which can enable users to search through databases by keywords and identify descriptors. Moreover, language and terminology evolve; therefore, in order to produce a truly useful search tool it will be necessary to clarify linguistic ambiguities and the relationships among terms that belong to the same family.

The Solar Archive Working Group has already started looking into this. The systemic aspects of solar energy is guiding the terminology work, both when we think of solar energy resources on earth as well as when we think of solar know-how and technologies that can convert those resources in energy forms useful to us (food, heat at low, medium and high temperatures, daylight, fuels, electricity, materials etc.).

Inputs to clarify linguistic ambiguities and relationships among terms will also come from the material contained in the archives, documentation, and bibliographies collected thus far.