From the Greek dia (through) and speirein (to scatter), we have the word diaspora. Most often applied to Jews living outside Israel, it has come to have an equally important application for Scotland. Since the eighteenth century, millions of Scots have left their native land for England, North America, Australasia and just about every other spot on the globe. In the US there are up to 25 million people who can claim Scots ancestry, five times as many as in the auld country itself. Consequently, there are many ties between native and emigrant Scots, plus many foreign-born Scots keen to rediscover their Scottish roots.

From the Greek dia (through) and speirein (to scatter), we have the word diaspora. Most often applied to Jews living outside Israel, it has come to have an equally important application for Scotland. Since the eighteenth century, millions of Scots have left their native land for England, North America, Australasia and just about every other spot on the globe. In the US there are up to 25 million people who can claim Scots ancestry, five times as many as in the auld country itself. Consequently, there are many ties between native and emigrant Scots, plus many foreign-born Scots keen to rediscover their Scottish roots.

The launch today of an online project called the Scottish Emigration Museum by the newly formed Museums Galleries Scotland is therefore both welcome and overdue. The new body takes over from the former Scottish Museums Council and represents the 340 museums and galleries that are not centrally funded. They encompass everything from internationally renowned collections such as Kelvingrove and the Hunterian to small local collections. Together they hold 12 million items and employ 11,000 people, half of them unpaid. But although nearly half of Scots visit museums every year - much higher than the UK average - as well as millions from elsewhere in the UK and abroad, the sector has a history of chronic underfunding. There has always been a contradiction between the appreciation of the importance of Scotland's culture and history and the struggle for recognition and investment in the collections, buildings and services of its museums. This looks unlikely to change. The new body has a grants budget of only £400,000, the equivalent of barely £1000 per museum. Already it looks like a poor relation of the country's other new cultural body, Creative Scotland.

The Emigration Museum, organised in conjunction with the National Museum of Scotland and the National Library, has an initial budget of £300,000 from the Scottish Government, as part of the initiatives to mark 2009 as the Year of Homecoming. Australia, the US, Canada, Ulster and the Irish Republic have had such resources for decades. Ireland, in particular, has an impressive track record in attracting expatriates as both tourists and investors.

Between now and next year, the small staff involved in Scotland's venture face the challenge of mapping the huge archive of relevant material spread across municipal, university, military and privately run museums. Scotland has the best written records of any country in the world, with census returns since 1841, statutory birth, marriage and death records from 1855 and parish records back to 1553, all now accessible online, thanks to an initiative by the General Register Office for Scotland. As a result, millions from Scotland's diaspora can trace their roots via their family computers. To turn that interest into tourist income, we need better links with the vast treasury of material held by local museums, such as cemetery records and local histories, to take such research further. It is high time Scotland stopped underselling its heritage.