ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the overarching trends that shaped the development of natural history museums with a focus on the impact of those trends on research carried out in those museums. It examines in more detail each research field and its influences. The chapter analyzes how the Digital Revolution shaped and enabled many changes in natural history museums and its impacts on research areas. The internal cultures of natural history museums have also changed greatly during their long history. Initially, such museums were primarily research and collecting organizations with, in many cases, a secondary public and educational face. Curators and scientists in natural history museums related to their peers in their own scientific communities and subject areas, and their contact with the public was minimal, highly didactic, and unidirectional. Natural history museums were observers, collectors, and classifiers of the natural world, sitting apart from day-to-day debates among the general populace.
