Ethnographic Analysis on the Use of Digital Technologies in two Local Museums

Local museums, on the margins of tourist flows, are going through difficult times due to a shortage of resources. The latter, impairs on their, mission of safeguarding local culture and reflecting on the present. Despite the spread of technology, the reality of small museums often tells of the difficulty of having the funds and skills to use basic technologies. The case I am presenting is a PhD research I am conducting at the Ethnographic Museum of Alta Brianza, in Galbiate (Italy), and at the Ethnographic Museum of Istria (Croatia). In Italy, a group of young volunteers is co-constructing a bottom-up project to give the museum a sustainable future, while in Istria, museum staff are working on new potential spaces to engage local communities through digital technologies. By comparing the two museums, I would like to show how digital technologies can orient choices, influence future expectations, manifest discomforts, contradictions, and limitations. Hence, the aim of this paper is to reflect on the needs that local realities may have, moving away from the contemporary rhetoric of technology within everyone's reach 1 . Further on, I suggest that digital technology can become an actor in building a sustainable future of a local museum as long as we know its possibilities, limits, and neccessary resources.