Rare Japenese reference books and artefacts could be sold off to fund a multi-million pound museum extension.

As part of a £4 million project to develop Maidstone Museum's East Wing by 2010 the collection is being sifted through and unwanted items will be auctioned or loaned to other museums.

But museums and heritage manager Simon Lace stressed this will benefit the remaining collection.

He said: “We’re not selling off the family silver. What we’re doing is looking at the collection calmly and rationally in an attempt to make better use of it.

“The museum’s collection is enormous. It’s the biggest museum collection in Kent, with two thirds of a million artefacts and specimens.

“We can’t keep storing lots of things we will never ever use; we have got to move things on and make space for new things to come in.”

The museum is still awaiting approval for the project. A report currently before Maidstone council recommends that unwanted artefacts are officially deaccessioned , which is to remove a work of art from a museum’s collection and sell it, and money raised from any sales be ring-fenced and put towards the extension.

Among the items which could be considered for sale are Japanese reference books which were collected at the end of the 19th century.

Mr Lace said: “They haven’t been looked at for many years because we would now use the internet.

“Some of those books are rare and some are collectable, so we have to make a decision about whether we want to keep them, whether we want to pass them to another museum or whether we want to sell them.

“If we sell them they could fetch around £10,000-20,000.”

Mr Lace estimates that in total £40,000 to £50,000 will be raised from the sale of materials which is a drop in the ocean towards their final goal.

The museum already has a grant of £2 million from the Heritage Lottery fund, and £400,000 from Maidstone council.

The remaining £1.6 million will be from grant making trusts, and funds the museum can raise itself.

If the council approves the project a list of unwanted items will be drawn up.

Mr Lace said: “It could be 100 things, it could be 1,000 things, it could be more, I don’t know.

“We won’t let anything go into the private domain that we don’t already have a better example of.

“We will ensure we keep the very best stuff.”