ISS 25 (1995).pdf - The International Council of Museums

is made to produce a conceptual tool with which to construct new museological
methodologies. An understanding of community dynamics assists museologists in
developing the behaviour in organisation, management, and practice that makes
museums into efficiently operating and environmentally sensitive institutions.
Furthermore, once museologists understand the processes at work in a community, they
are better placed to interpret why it is imperative for the human species to adopt an
environmentally sustainable way of life. Museum ecology could be further used to
study the responses made to the changing relationship between museums, humankind,
and the environment. Once environmental processes have illuminated how museums
function in their communities, then museologists are poised to interpret their function
in the natural environment for their communities, and the functions of the natural
environment as a whole. They then can illustrate the vital point that the best interests of
the human species are to not out-compete other species, since the perpetuation or
collapse of the community ecosystem ultimately is at stake.
References
Allaby, Michael
1994 Allaby, Michael (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ecology, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, UK.
Ames, Michael M
1992 Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver.
AJ:Iders, Cindy, Mark Gerson, Maura Reynolds, Geoffrey Maslen, Christina Bonasegna,
Jacqueline Guigui, Janet Koplos, Isabel de la Cruz, and Kathy Curnow Nasara.
1988 Museums: A Global View. Museum News, 67(1):22-47.
Baccini, Peter and Paul H. Brunner
1991 Metabolism of the Anthrosphere. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany
Bennett, John W
1876 The Ecological Transition. Pergamon Press, New York.
Darwin, Charles Robert
1859 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, John Murray, London, UK.
Doering, Zahava D
1992 Environmental Impact. Museum News, 71(2):50-52.
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