The word museum - defined in the dictionary as "a building where objects of historical, artistic or scientific interest are exhibited and preserved" - has an unfortunate affinity with mausoleum, a large stately tomb.
Take three letters out of the latter and you end up with the former; indeed, in some instances, the two seem almost interchangeable, and this is particularly the case where museums and their management cling to a traditional and reductive interpretation of their role as mere "preservers of the past".
In the eyes of those who rigidly adhere to such a vision - a fundamentalist approach to the museum world - any deviation that appears to shoot the breeze of modernity through the cobwebs of antiquity is seen as heresy.
And there appear to be strains of such attitudes at large in the small society of Dunedin.
The city, most would agree, is well-endowed, if not actually overloaded, with two separate major museum establishments, the Otago Museum and the Otago Settlers Museum - and a third, if one includes the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
The question that regularly excites partisan opinion is, but is it well served? This appears, in part, to have been the impetus behind a report commissioned by the Dunedin City Council to review the management options for the city's museums and the art gallery and delivered in May 2008.
The report written by Dr Rodney Wilson, a prominent New Zealand museum expert and consultant, remained under wraps until exhumed by this newspaper recently following a request under the Official Information Act.
It is understandable that the DCC preferred, perhaps, to allow the report to gather dust, because at face value it appears that the advantages in a potential merger between the two museums identified by it were allowed to be subsumed by some of the likely difficulties.
The terms in which those obstacles are alluded to in the report leads to the suspicion that a merger of any or all of the functions and services of the museums was simply put into the too-hard basket.
Dr Wilson writes in his report that "in a perfect world" it would be "perfectly possible" for the settlers museum to become a specialist history unit of the Otago Museum.
Further, he says that there is a "natural alignment" between the council-owned settlers museum and the Otago Museum, which receives substantial funding from the council but operates as a trust.
"Improved collaboration and co-operation would arise from that relationship and a significant number of services could be shared," he wrote.
So what would stand in the way of such a move? It appears from the report that resistance of staff at the settlers museum and concerns about the "culture" of the Otago Museum loomed large.
More specifically there was criticism of the uniforms of staff "livery", and the styles of its brochures.
All this apparently mitigated against a merger or takeover.
"The negative consequences of such a move . . . far outweigh the advantages of a natural alignment and the ability to work more collaboratively," Dr Wilson concluded, while at the same time appearing to dismiss at least some of the more specious reasoning advanced, noting that the Otago Museum in its style and presentation was simply part of a worldwide trend: "The brighter imagery that accompanies this is simply part of the message that today's museums are lively, engaging and interactive places," he said.
There is, of course, a context in which such revelations should be located.
The first element is that there has been a stream of negative public comment over several months, mostly from disaffected former employees of the Otago Museum, as to the strategic decisions, management style and demands made on them by their employer.
The second is that the museum is an outstanding success.
The Southern Lands Southern People Gallery, the Tropical Butterfly House, the major visiting exhibitions, as well as its standing collections, which this year alone have attracted 600,000 visitors, attest to this.
To some of its critics, the Otago Museum's biggest failing would appear to be its popularity.
But "popular" should not be confused with "populist", just as "museum" should not be mistaken for "mausoleum".
Rather than dedicating themselves solely to the corpses of cultures past, today's museums must be responsive, innovative, vibrant, forward-looking and well-managed.
The best museums will treat the past with reverence and respect, while looking with vision to the future.
The Otago Museum is one of the region's most positive amenity stories precisely because it does both with determination and aplomb.