A new study identifying future trends in the museum sector has said that museums must develop digital strategies to survive as more and more people turn to the internet to soak up culture.

The NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Museum Edition – created by The New Media Consortium in partnership with the Balboa Park Online Collaborative – looked at which trends and important developments in technology will drive changes to museum education and interpretation, the challenges ahead and how to overcome them. Compiled by a body of 54 experts, the report charts the “five-year horizon”, looking at more than 13 years of research and publications to identify future trends.

With the need identified for museums to start developing digital strategies if they haven’t already, concerns were raised about privacy issues. The report said steps were already being taken by institutions such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has created its own digital department headed by a chief digital officer, with allocated resources and facilities to enhance innovation and adapt to a changing museum environment. Also raised was the need to improve “digital literacy” of museum professionals, so they can adapt and interact with an ever-more technology-reliant consumer.

“At the centre of this challenge is the notion of museums needing to be more aware and responsive to their audiences’ evolving behaviours to stay relevant,” reads the report. “As a result, they are being urged to shift their attitudes to balance digital infrastructure and digital mindset in equal measure.”

In line with this, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives and gamification of museums are also expected to be increasingly adopted, with further use made of mobile and online engagement while in the museum.

The experts agreed on two mid-term trends, which include an increase of collaboration between museums, as well as enhanced focus on the power of data analytics to inform and steer museum operations.

Finally, the report predicted that within four-to-five years, a network of connected objects that link the physical world with the world of information through the web – known as The Internet of Things (IoT) – will dictate museum policy, offering vast potential for improving conservation efforts, increasing access to contextual knowledge and reinventing consumer interaction with cultural works. IoT will offer collections of networked objects that tell their own stories using histories and metadata that can be potentially downloaded from the objects themselves, "completely reinventing and changing the paradigm of interpretation and public engagement." The report suggests IoT will be aligned very closely with the rise of wearable technology, which will diminish the use of apps in favour of experiences involving direct interaction with objects and surroundings.

To read the full NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Museum Edition report, click here.