Journal of Cultural Heritage 1 (2000) 198 – 200 © 2000 E ´ ditions scientifiques et me ´dicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved S 1296-2074(00) 00163-1/COR Letter to the Editor An archive of researchers and enterprises on cultural heritage in Italy Angelo Ferrari*, Stefano Tardiola CNR – Special Project on Cultural Heritage, Viale dell’Universita ` 11, 00185 Rome, Italy Received 17 January 2000 1. What the database is for Our cultural heritage is the testimony to the course of our civilisation, and its protection and upkeep are essential for an understanding of our cultural identity. With regard to these latter, we can ask the follow- ing questions. Which and how many companies operate in the cultural heritage sector in Italy and Europe? What quality of service do they offer, and how professional are they? What are their relation- ships with the European Union, and consequently how quickly can they be ready to participate in European Union Cultural Heritage projects? The database deals with small or medium-sized companies that work wholly or partly in the field of cultural heritage. In identifying and classifying these companies, we have used the widest possible defini- tion of ‘cultural heritage’, encompassing works of art, archaeological finds and sites, buildings of his- torical interest, paper heritage, the biological and ethno-anthropological archive, folk traditions, etc. This interpretation of cultural heritage means that a greater diversity of activities carried out by enter- prises and researchers is included. There are large, complex operations that deal with entire archaeo- logical or monumental sites and which involve groups of companies working together, and then there are other, highly specialised projects that con- centrate their attention on single objects which are often very delicate, rare or unique. These are carried out by very small companies with few employees, but with a high level of professionality. Thus, the database is enriched by the inclusion of both large companies, very few of which work exclusively in the cultural heritage sector, and small and micro companies, highly specialised and often with a very high quality of craftsmanship. 2. Five hundred keywords The database has three main aims. The first aim is to identify the companies and researchers working in the cultural heritage sector, discover their distribution over the national terri- tory, and group them according to the work that they carry out. At the moment the database contains 11 601 files, of which 9 959 deal with companies and the other 2 002 with researchers. The database’s search engine was created on Mi- crosoft Software Access and the programme for its use is available in five languages (Italian, English, French, German and Spanish) and is programmed to take into account the territorial and administrative subdivisions of the European Union. The database has a vocabulary of around 500 keywords which are organised on a branching struc- ture, and which refer to the service or work carried out by the company or researcher. These keywords are an effective tool for a standard classification of * CNR, Istituto di Chimica Nucleare, via Salaria tm. 29. 300, 00016 Monterotondo; cnrpfbc@tin.it