Examination of living museums in Turkey and abroad

The literature gained new concepts in line with the dynamic and progressive museology studies. Living museums have been established in order to sustain and preserve the communities' own cultures with the new understanding of museology, awareness of sustainability and for various other reasons. Living museums first started to be established as personal initiatives in the private museum status. Later, they were also established by state and local governments with various projects and budgets, and even reached the qualifications to be divided into types according to their characteristics. However, in this study, it has been observed that there is still a lack of definition about living museums. Their types are not clearly categorized, some museums are not specified as living museums while carrying out such activities, and there are insufficient studies in the academic field. The aim of this study is to pursue answers to the questions of "what is a living museum? how has it developed? what are the examples of living museums in Turkey and abroad?" based on current academic studies and the digital with which the museums introduce themselves. With the answers to these research questions, this paper aims to explore the living museums and contribute to museology and museum management literature. The data of the thesis research was obtained by using qualitative research methods through observation and document analysis. It is aimed to obtain holistic data by making interdisciplinary studies about living museums and related issues, especially based on examples. In this study, the keyword "living museum" was searched in the library data on the websites of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and almost all of the accessible museums in the world were investigated on the Internet. In addition to these, country-based searches were also made on the websites of the museums, the cultural portals of the relevant countries and the press news were scanned and examined. In addition, information about academic studies in the field was obtained by scanning current printed publications along with international and national articles. Finally, selected examples with different concepts and prominent in the relevant countries were included in the content of the thesis. The data regarding the process and the research are shared in the sections related to the content analysis method. It has been concluded that the number of living museums with the principles of sustainability, which has become widespread throughout the world, is already high and keeps increasing and they preserve the local culture by sharing their unique tangible and intangible cultural heritage elements with the visitors. The research findings, suggestions and research questions in this review thesis are intended to be a source for new research in museology. Keywords: living museum, living history museum, ecomuseum, village museum, farm museum, museology, museum management