Artifacts and Specimen at Approved Museums and Repositories

Repository Guidance Library

The Curation Alliance Forums:

State-Approved Museums and Curatorial Repositories have held in-person and virtual Forums to inform held-in-trust partners and those interested in the program about collections management best practices and to gather to share resources and socially network since the year 2016. These Forums have consisted of 1/2 day of presentations and 1/2 day of a behind the scenes collections tours. Due to the COVID pandemic the 2020 Forum was suspended and the 2021 Forum was held virtually. Please see our program YouTube channel for a few recorded presentations from 2021.

This is a template for updating or developing your mandatory collection's management policy:

Developed by the Council for State Archivists and adapted by WESTPAS (Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance Service) this pocket template has been modified for Colorado State-approved museums/repositories to complete their mandatory emergency plan: 

Prepared by Michelle K. Knoll and Bruce B. Huckell for the Society for American Archaeology's Committee on Museums, Collections and Curation, these guidelines offer invaluable advice for museums/repositories and archaeologists:

Developed by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS), these workflow instructions provide step by step directions to make custom archival boxes and packages for archaeological collections:

These instructions developed by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS) provide step by step custom mountmaking procedures:

Excel calculator tool to figure the proper archival box cutting size for anthropology mountmaking & re-boxing collections developed by Bethany Williams while at DMNS:


State-Approved Museums/Repositories Network Newsletter:

To subscribe to the Curation Notes e-newsletter for Colorado State-Approved Museums and Curatorial Repositories please sign up using this form: HERE

Repository Confab

What exactly is a "confab" you might ask? According to various dictionaries a "con•fab",(kŏn′făb″), short for confabulation, means)► n. a casual talk; a conversation, chat or presentation. These virtual meetings are intended for each of our repository partners and those planning to join the program to provide an opportunity to share information with each other as well to provide repository updates. If you are interested in joining us for the next Confab and you didn't receive the program invitation just email HC_StateCuration@state.co.us

Past Confabs can also be viewed again on our YouTube page found HERE