Museums in Central Asia: The Role of Cultural Institutions in disseminating Information
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-03-29

The countries of Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, or Uzbekistan have great tourist potential both for foreign visitors and companies who might be interested in investing in tourism. A key factor making the place so attractive for tourists is its history, starting with the Silk Road, which dates back to Roman times (Buyers, 2003), continuing with renowned scientists and scholars of the Medieval world, through the dominance of the nomads, the Russian empire, the Soviet era. If we add the beauty of nature, landscapes, cultural, archaeological and heritage unique attractions, hospitality of people, arts and crafts of the region, it is easy to understand why this region can be considered as a unique and very attractive tourist destination.However, one common denominator in all the studies is that all these countries, to a different degree, lack proper infrastructure and have not developed proper mechanisms to attract more potential visitors and tourists.One of the most often quoted sentences in the literature on the tourism industry is that information is the lifeblood of tourism.. It has been clearly demonstrated in numerous studies that museums have direct impact on a country’s economy. The aim of this paper is to analyse if, and to what extent, the countries of Central Asia are competitive in promoting their national heritage. It aims to verify, to what degree historical and archaeological museums in the countries of Central Asia are able to adopt effective strategies to facilitate access to information for potential tourists in order to attract them. The issue of competitiveness of the museums on the digital level and the issue of digital divide is the most important one. Providing digital access to the exhibitions, information on museums has been analysed. The objects of the present analysis are historical and archaeological museums in five countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For each country two museums were chosen for the analysis. The criteria of the choice were as follows:
• State museums
• Possessing archaeological, ethnographic or historical collections
• At least one of the museums in every of the country in question is situated in its capital.

Author - Dr. Jarosz, Katarzyna, University of Logistics, Wroclaw, Poland (Presenting author)