You call attention to the crisis in Italy's natural history museums — in funding, personnel and administration, as well as in their visibility, research and purpose (Nature 515, 311–312; 2014). There is a way to prevent the long-term management of these scientific collections from deteriorating into an elitist hobby.

The Italian education and heritage ministries should together facilitate a functional and administrative connection between the country's smaller natural history museums. Such a 'meta-museum' could coordinate long-term goals and scientific activities, enabling facilities and budgetary and technical resources to be shared — as in Germany's Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt and Leibniz Association in Berlin. The largest of the museums could stay as independent scientific institutions, similar to London's Natural History Museum and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

To strengthen their scientific influence, these museums must participate in survey work and field research that contributes to the discovery, conservation and promulgation of national and global biodiversity.