Despite extra storage for its items, the Littleton Museum recently formalized a selective collections policy.
City council recently approved a budget that includes $20,000 in extra storage units for the museum that collects items pertaining to Littleton history and culture. Tim Nimz, director of library and museum services, said the units will be used to house the museum’s textiles and clothing, which is a collection that continues to grow and requires delicate care.
“Everything’s going to have some kind of connection to Littleton history,” Nimz said. “We have clothing we’ve collected from the late 1800s all the way to contemporary times.”
In addition to the clothing needing to be hung up so it doesn’t develop creases, the museum must maintain a temperature of about 72 degrees and humidity level of about 37 percent.
Council also recently adopted its first collections policy for the museum. However, it is the current policy the museum has kept for the last several years as their storage space fills up.
Nimz said what they take is dependent upon what the item is. For example, if someone wanted to donate a map of Littleton or the region from the 1920s, the museum probably wouldn’t take it.
“If you found a map from 1829 that shows some of the expansion across the Rocky Mountain West, we would probably take that because it fills a real hole in our collection,” Nimz said.
He said an area where they’re really running out of space is archival, or paper, materials. For example, if someone wanted donate a few boxes of notes from a previous council member, they probably would not take all of it, Nimz said.
“We’d want to go through those boxes and cull out the specific documents that would be good for us to highlight,” he said.
He said the museum will take items from Littleton’s history or take less-specific items from a time such as the 1890s when Littleton was more a region.
“We’re looking at some connection of the item to Littleton or some connection from the person donating it to Littleton, or the person’s family,” he said.
He said they have about 45,000 items and have 50-100 offered every week. They have about 10,000 square feet of storage, but that’s about 90-95 percent full.
He said they might look at collaborating with other museums for space or saving up some revenue from the city’s new impact fee to expand their collections onto another story of the museum.
Clayton Woullard: 303-954-2953, cwoullard@denverpost.com or
