The significance of environmental protection in the activities of natural
history museums in Poland – the findings of sociological research
The paper presents the findings of the sociological research that was carried out by the author in February 2017. The objective of the project was to find about the role and significance of environmental protection in the activities of Polish natural history museums. The first part of the paper contains theoretical introduction into the condition of natural environment in Poland, defines the term of a “museum”, and provides descriptions of the operating principles of natural history museums. The second part, on the other hand, presents the techniques employed in the research, i.e. a web-based survey addressed to the employees of museums, as well as the available material in the form of information contained on museum websites. Given the premises of the grounded theory, the collected material was subjected to qualitative analysis. As a result, the author rejected the proposed working hypothesis which assumed that the employees of museums more frequently admitted that there were some obstacles in the performance of nature-friendly activities than that there were none. Additionally, in cases where barriers were indeed found, the analysis showed that their sources originated in deeper structures, and to overcome them would require multilateral cooperation of institutions that deal with environmental protection.
