A Small But Mighty Collection of Scrapbooks

The Denver Police Museum houses many significant artifacts with rich histories essential to our mission of building a bridge between the community and the Denver Police Department through storytelling. Along with artifacts, our collection is also made up of a small but mighty collection of scrapbooks. Although the term scrapbook may invoke imagery of the local craft store and a mother creating a book to preserve the memories of their child’s most prized moments; these scrapbooks are similar in the sense of preservation of memories and stories but tend to provide a toned down aesthetic with more depth. These scrapbooks have been donated to the Denver Police Museum by the families of officers in the hope that the personal history of their family members will be recorded and preserved for future generations. The Denver Police Museum currently has about fifteen to twenty scrapbooks ranging from the 1930s through the 1990s. These books were created and maintained by the officer or a family member and included everything from newspaper clippings, commendations, academy graduations, birth and death announcements. They provide a first – hand account of the past from a variety of perspectives. They also provide a visual of what the politics and societal climate was at that particular time in history. The stories highlighted in these scrapbooks bring to life what it was like for an officer during a specific era and their daily life and challenges they experienced on the job. There are stories of criminal activity, acts of compassion, life events, and the difficult times of being an officer through some of the pivotal and incredibly heartbreaking moments in Colorado history such as the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. The Museum currently has a dedicated volunteer, retired Denver Police Officer Barbara Cisneros, who performs the laborious but intriguing task of reading through the scrapbooks extrapolating information and documenting everything for the collection records. At this time, Barbara has personally read through six scrapbooks. Many of the first – hand accounts humanize the officers and provide a reminder of simpler times and long – forgotten department policies; all of which excites our volunteers most about reading through these personal histories. Reading through these scrapbooks is a wonderful and fulfilling task for our volunteers and they look forward to every new scrapbook they open and read. The process of recording all information within a scrapbook consists of reading every article included in the book along with documenting names, dates, and places referenced throughout the articles. Providing a detailed description of each item included in the book is important to gather all pertinent information for our records. An object ID number is assigned in our PastPerfect software database to each scrapbook along with a brief description and reference to the detailed document created by our volunteer. Once the entire scrapbook has been read through and recorded it will then be placed in our collection storage area for safekeeping. The stories and history pulled from these scrapbooks are invaluable to the Museum. To accurately tell the story of the Denver Police Department we need to have documented first – hand accounts and experiences and these scrapbooks are the perfect catalyst for us to obtain this information. We are truly grateful to the families who have donated these wonderful scrapbooks to the Museum, and we are honored to be the caretakers of these very important artifacts.