I have spent hundreds of hours researching in museums and libraries, so I am aware of the urgency of the issue. I'll focus on my region because I know it very well.
You raised the issue of the role it plays in economic development. I think there's certainly a push from a tourism perspective to promote our heritage and our history. But we often get the settler history from tourism, the kind of kitschy, two-dimensional story that people know before they see it. It seems to me that it's the role of the museum to mine our history, find new histories within our history, and look for stories that weren't seen as significant 30 years ago, 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.
The problem the museums are facing is this. What kind of support do you have for field researchers to get out and do first-person narratives before they're lost and to work in partnerships with universities to get collections of photos, from people who moved away, before these photos are scattered? Is there support within the programming dollars for that role?