Change, we are continually assured, is good. It is the agent of progress. The prime minister, Tony Blair, tells us his agenda has "no reverse gear", echoing Margaret Thatcher's iconic "the lady is not for turning". With such a modernising outlook it seems the past can't get a look-in.
As it's is all too easy to forget the past we have, for example, museums which can stimulate, fascinate and educate; satisfying our curiosity and enlarging our understanding of the past and present.
And guess what? Social work has its own museum, and has done for nearly 30 years. But come Christmas it will have closed.
The Heatherbank Museum of Social Work - the dream of one man - was founded in October 1975 by Colin Harvey, a social worker and lecturer who practised mostly in the voluntary sector. "His intention was to allow social workers in practice and in training to learn something about the history of their profession," says the museum's curator Alistair Ramage, a retired teacher and non-stipendiary Church of Scotland minister.
Harvey originally sited the museum in his own house in Milngavie, seven miles north of Glasgow. A grant enabled him to buy a van to take the museum out to people - a practice that only stopped when the van finally did. Sadly, Harvey, a polio-sufferer, died in 1985 aged just 53. However, his wife, Rosemary, took up the mantle. "She wanted to appeal to a wider public than just the social work community and thus developed exhibitions with social work connections," says Ramage, who became curator in 1993.
The museum moved to Glasgow Caledonian University the following year, with the institution taking over the funding in 1996. It was moved to the city centre campus in 1999. "Since then we have operated a standard museum programme as well as providing resource materials for students of the university - which began the new social work degree this year."
The public gallery reflects social exclusion themes more than pure social work. Ramage agrees: "We identified eight areas of concern that linked into social work but which didn't say 'social work' full stop. Originally we had sections on housing, health, child care, the church [the Church of Scotland is the largest employer of social workers in the voluntary sector], prisons and poorhouses - and later we included two more: disability and work."
The museum's Scottish slant is no better exemplified than by a set of large, chunky keys from Barnhill, Scotland's largest poor house, that tugged at my imagination in the way only history can. Barnhill, now long demolished, was sited but a mile away from the museum itself.
There is also a strong voluntary sector link. Two street collecting boxes for the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (now Children First and the equivalent of the NSPCC south of the border) feature foot guards from the Queen's household division complete with bearskin hats and rifles. Ramage wondered "whether this was a slight anomaly - even if a soldier with a gun was thought appropriate - in Scotland you want a man in a kilt, surely?" The answer he discovered proved quite simple. "The RSSPCC wasn't too well-off so they often bought second-hand collection boxes from the NSPCC down south - which was not short of money."
Sadly, the museum is also short of money. The doors will close for the last time on 23 December. "My responsibility on returning to work after Christmas is to de-commission the public gallery - basically putting everything into boxes," sighs a resigned Ramage. "There's a large lottery bid being put together to digitise the artefacts as part of move towards creating a virtual museum. The plan is to create in the new university building, set to open next summer, a 'museum in a box' - a large cube that a visitor can walk in and access the website with a few artefacts on display."
So from being able to touch the artefacts you will soon only be able to touch a screen. The future may be virtual but the past remains very real indeed.
