The preservation of scientific heritage is a major challenge in present-day society. Dispersed through a multitude of institutions – from universities to schools and research laboratories – and unprotected by cultural heritage legislation, the preservation of scientific heritage needs to gradually change from a museum-based approach to an approach increasingly oriented towards in situ preservation, sustained by networks and partnerships at the national and international scale. This shift has several implications in training and the provision of reference materials. One of them is a thesaurus for terminology classification. The Thesaurus project was initiated in 2006 under the coordination of the Museum of Astronomy in Rio de Janeiro and the Museum of Science of the University of Lisbon. It was inspired by similar terminology control initiatives in France and Italy and it involved a network of 12 museums and collections from Brazil and Portugal: in Brazil, Pedro II Secondary School (Rio), Museum of the Polytechnic School (Rio), Museum of Science and Technique (Juiz de Fora), Museum of Pharmacy (Juiz de Fora), Museum of Science and Technology (Ouro Preto), Museum of Pharmacy (Ouro Preto); and in Portugal, Science Museum (Coimbra), Museum of Science (Porto), Museum of the Faculty of Engineering (Porto), Museum of Physics of the High Institute of Engineering (Lisbon), Museum of the High Institute of Engineering (Porto). It encompasses more than 60,000 scientific instruments from the 18th to the 20th century. The Thesaurus of Scientific Instruments in Portuguese is finished and ready to be launched online, in paper version and in DVD. In this paper we present the results and impact of the collaboration project and we evaluate and discuss how its major difficulties were overcome. We also present the next steps of its development, particularly in terms of multi-language approach, with a focus on Spanish and English, and as a tool for collection databases.

This presentation is based on work co-authored by Marta C. Lourenço.