POSITION AND FUNCTIONS OF MUSEUMS FACING THE FUTURE

The pace of technological and social change in the 21st century is incredibly rapid, hence the e need for Museums to be flexible and adaptive. Museums do matter to people and museum practitioners should be increasingly concerned about access, engagement and outreach, this will require continuously redefining the mission, purpose and mandates of museums in contemporary society. In some instances, due to economic downturn museums are forced to reassess, re-evaluate and in some cases reinvent themselves.

Museums are an essential part of our public realm not only because they successfully contribute immensely to research, education, social cohesion and other government objectives but also because many of them have functions which make them different and unique from other professions. Museums bring local and international audiences together, they bring different communities into contact with each other, they also care for local, regional, national and international collections, they bring meaning, context and consistency to our more fragmented and diverse cultures.

Therefore it is vitally critical that Museums embrace change with the times in line with needs of current realities. The following are five key areas in which museums must focus on critically if they are to survive the future.

1. COLLECTIONS AND THEIR USES
The modern museum with its dinosaurs, live insects, and breathtaking displays of gems and minerals is a wonderfully accessible place for popular science education. Children around the world love to visit museums. But in most cases, behind the public face of such institutions lies the entirely different world of the collections, several hundred thousand or even millions of specimens of living organisms or fossils, maintained with great care and at huge expense. The subject matter of the museum may range from zoology, botany, entomology, paleontology, zoology and anthropology. These collections are the foundation for research on some of the fundamental phenomena of biological science: evolution, ecology, climate change, biogeography, behavior, agriculture, and cultural anthropology. The peak of the culture of collecting was the Victorian age, when collectors travelled out across the globe, risking life and limb, usually without much regard to the sensibilities of the country and people involved, to bring back literally everything they could find. Such blanket collecting is now unfashionable. Large collections are very costly to maintain. However, it has to be said that if our predecessors had not collected so broadly, many species would currently be unknown to us, lost in the accelerating pace of environmental degradation in recent times.
Collecting of the more traditional kind one of every species and every variant, is still very common among amateur collectors. But for professionals collecting is more focused today. Museum scientists tend first to identify a specific problem and then collect what is needed to answer the question. All collecting, even at home, must be conducted with a careful view to laws and property rights. Apart from entirely reasonable national sensibilities, many organisms have huge financial potential in the pharmaceutical industry; collecting abroad must always involve careful and diplomatic preparation, formal permissions, and usually an agreement to share the specimens with the source country.
Perhaps the greatest overall challenge for natural science collections is for the great research museums to dispel, once and for all, the image of collections sitting somewhere in the basement of a building, the specimens and their curators gathering dust together, and all devoted to some arcane exercise of identifying and classifying the results of someone else's science. The reality is that the modern museum is a constantly evolving entity, home to a stimulating mixture of sciences including evolution, biogeography, environmental biology, human biology, geology, and molecular biology all in the context of growing public interest and a need for new modes of public access.

2. ACCESS
Museum collections and the research done on them are core functions of the work of museums. Both are areas of potential interest for visitors, yet in their eyes are one of the great 'hidden mysteries' of the museum.

Not so long ago museums were essentially gatekeepers, choosing from all of the wonderful things they have access to, which will be on display. Now that access can be provided digitally, the issue becomes more one of making these valuable resources more accessible and visible, and building communities to share perspectives.

At present over 90% of the collections of the National Museums of Kenya are in permanent storage. A 'world renowned collection of over 300 000 objects represents the past and present yet it is mostly locked away, hidden from the very people for whom it was intended.

Access to museums' stored collections has been extremely topical and more and more museums, are realizing the immense value of this resource. Store tours are not the only means of access for the public to museum collections. Many museums have created, or proposed the creation of, open storage centre. But if this is not possible then conducted tours of the stores for groups of people is a commonly used alternative.

The future of the collections lies with the creation of an open storage centre, a means to ensure that the stored collections become a permanent way of engagement with the public. Access to stored collections is being adopted by many museums as an access strategy.

3. INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Innovations in technology continue to impact the world on a daily basis and it is time the museum gives technology a closer engagement. Digital technologies and the internet are currently enabling museums to foster a greater sense of community with their online audience, by going beyond offering information and images to encouraging new audiences and creating and sustaining online communities, including social networking sites. Museums need to invest time and money in virtual services, noting people are traveling less to terror prone countries and that visiting the physical museum may not be possible but an online museum experience may be a perfect deal.

A museum is in almost all cases a physical space with physical exhibits. Yet access can also be provided online, including in three dimensional worlds. It is not a question of choosing between them, or even doing both. Rather the issue is how to integrate both physical and virtual so they complement each other.

4. COLLABORATIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS

Museums should take the lead in creating effective and meaningful partnerships between themselves for knowledge productions and sharing of expertise in areas that other museums may not have. These partnerships should involve more long-term collaborations of mutual benefit to these institutions in training, loans, exhibitions, conservation and research. These partnerships should further contribute to greater understanding and informed debate about the cultures of the partnering countries. Through partnerships research initiatives are created as well as learning events and outreach programmes with communities, schools, volunteers, life long learner and the general public.

These partnerships celebrate the shared vision of both institutions to strengthen cultural understanding, support biodiversity conservation across the world, and raise awareness of global threats to collections and ecosystems.
Partnerships help build a sustainable museum sector in Africa and include African museums in the international circuit of museum exhibitions. This is an approach that should be embraced in order to promote an understanding of world cultures and promote cultural integration and exchange. It is becoming necessary to introduce regional perspectives in curatorial work through pursuance of themes and subjects that transcend national borders with a view to enhance a deeper understanding of cultures within the region.
The National Museums of Kenya has partnered with many museums around the world but on a large scale, the NMK has been able to partner with the British Museum and Most recently the National Museum of China in Under-water Archaeology.

5. COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Museums, their missions, their civic, social responsibilities, and their modes of engagement with communities are in a constant process of transformation in response to social and economic imperatives at local, national and global levels. There is a need for museums to stay relevant and be responsive to pressing social and environmental issues such as population and sustainability, social justice and Indigenous rights. Funding bodies and stakeholders now acknowledge that museums and programs need to demonstrate impact and value within their local communities in order to attract further funding and ongoing support.

In times of change, museums play an important role in societal questions of social cohesion, identity and belonging. In search of their roots, people turn to heritage.
Most museums in the world have been transformed and taken communities as partners in their programmes and activities. This new approach has created a favorable working condition between museums and communities as museums as are about people and created by the people themselves. However, introducing participatory management depends on the museum's commitment. This requires time and resources to develop: to develop consensus among stakeholders; to establish new institutional arrangements; to ensure appropriate rules and incentives for local involvement, and to build organizational capacity at the local level.

Community involvement in museums is an important factor in bridging the gap and improving relationship between the two institutions. The social inclusion leads to trust, understanding, a sense of identity, and creating a museum that is more relevant to the community.

The museum must create its base in the community, i.e. work with the local community to expand the operation base of the museums and become more relevant. The community involvement concept is important because a community has shared common characteristics, aspects and attributes. Museums play an important role as custodians of a cultural heritage. They, however, have an added responsibility to assist national and civic governments as well as the civil society in responding to community and societal problems and developmental needs. The relevance and strength of a museum should lie in its ability to respond to the needs of its community and contribution to solving societal problems. Community involvement enables museums to get access to the community and becomes sustainable through feedback, ideas, views, new insights and relevance.

6. CONSERVATION OF COLLECTIONS

Conservation and restoration is the backbone of any museum and is devoted to the preservation of cultural heritage for the future. Conservation activities include examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive conservation. All of this work is supported by research and education.

The study of objects while they are being conserved contributes to a better understanding of the collections and the mechanisms by which they deteriorate. This information is important to the development of new conservation techniques and allows advice to be given on the best conditions for the display and storage of objects to prevent further decay.

Therefore there is a need to develop and strengthen capacity in the field of Conservation in the Museum to increase the knowledge in the care and preservation of collections and investigate the collection for the benefit of present and future generations.

7. EXHIBITIONS AND OUTREACH PROGRAMMES

Throughout the world, exhibitions have become one of the most important media by which museums communicate and assert themselves as educational institutions. Museums are about communication. They collect, preserve, interpret and study objects and collections for this purpose and there is no more effective way to communicate than through exhibitions. Exhibitions and the communication space they constitute can be an invaluable tool when it comes to changing the way museums operate and communicate with their public.

Museums are ideal places where stories can be told that encourage visitors to make their own meanings. Stories are the most fundamental way in which we learn. They have a beginning and an end. They teach by encouraging both personal reflection and public discussion. Stories inspire wonder and awe; they allow a listener to imagine another time and place, to find the universal in the particular, and to feel empathy for others. They preserve individual and collective memory and speak to both the adult and children.

Museums play a unique role in educating the public towards a better and wider understanding of cultures by developing their display and exhibition techniques. In this process of exploring new themes for displays and exhibitions, museums would open themselves up to other fields of enquiry, ultimately contributing to a wider understanding of their role as educational sites

8. EDUCATION OUTREACH SPECIFICALLY FOR SCHOOL KIDS

The nature of museums is such that they are an attraction for mostly children and specifically school going children. Museums include a wide range of institutions and they exist as much as a public service as for public education and enjoyment.

Outreach programmes for children are delivered by many museums but fewer engage with school children at a deep level and fewer still use their museums to do it. Education Outreach for school children if well practiced is a resource that supports teaching and learning at School. Outreach work around the sciences such as zoology and geology, using object-based learning should be linked to the primary school curriculum.

Museum educators should not wait anymore for the school children to visit museums but should take the museum artefacts into schools and delivers workshops about the specific subject. The artefacts therefore become inspirational focal points around which curriculum topics are discussed.

Museum outreach work should form a key element of the school participation agenda. This will makes museums distinctive by using its collections extensively in its outreach work to engage and inspire young people.

There is no doubt that the face of a museum is its exhibitions but, building visitor's interest depends upon how museums exhibit their collections and use their collections to have an educational effect on school children..