Montana

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Montana

For a Big State with a Big History, Montana has yet to create any Big Archives online. But they're getting started, and have some intriguing digital materials available, chiefly at the Montana Memory Project.

The Montana Memory Project is made up of materials from several dozen collections at libraries, universities, government archives, and other sources around the state. This is a hard collection to describe, other than to say what's not included.

It's not a deep family history resource -- I saw no name look-ups available for census, military records, court cases, and the like.
It's not comprehensive -- a search on cowboys (this is Montana, after all) turned up only 200 or so results, and only a few dozen photographs.
It's not easy to find things -- a search on Map turned up a few thousand hits, but very few actual maps
(Montana Memory uses the CONTENTdm platform, which I've always found to be very unfriendly to end users, and to produce very poor relevancy for search results ...archivists of the world, take note!).

That said, if you have a very specific search in mind, or if you have the time for a lot of browsing, there are some great materials to be found here, from the following collections:

August ‘Gus’ Ludwig Hormay Papers

Butte Digital Image Project

Central Montana Historical Photographs

Dudley White Collection

F. Jay Haynes Architectural Drawings

Flathead County Local History

Heritage Book of the Original Fergus County Area

James Willard Schultz Photographs

Jordan, James Crooks Calk

Livingston High School Annuals

MHS Archives

MHS Library

MHS Livestock Brands

MHS Photograph Archives

Miles City Fort Keogh

Miles City Medical History

Miles City Saddlemakers

Miles City Veterans

Miles City WWII Peggy Letters

Miles Community College Horse of Course

Mining World Index

Montana Indian Law Portal

Montana State Library, Various Collections

Montana Subscription Histories

Montana Tech Campus

Montana Tech of The University of Montana

Parmly Billings Library Historic Collection

Rocky Mountain College Yearbooks

Rosetta Kamlowsky Interviews

Sidney-Richland County Library collections

Thomas B. Brooks Photographs

UM - The Jack L Demmons Bonner School Photographs

UM Western Photos

Will James Collection

By the way, use the Montana Memory's Preferences button to increase the number of results shown per page (unless you're on a slow connection).

There are a few other Montana archive resources to take note of, though none yet house a great deal of content.

The Montana Historical Society is certainly a player in this area, and their site includes a description of major Montana Archives, Library and Photography collections, all offline, but with some online search tools to see more about their holdings.

They have also created an online African-Americans in Montana Heritage Resources Project, which offers background information, some primary materials, and links to other resources, both online and off.

At the Montana State Library, you can conduct an online search of their holdings, to explore many of their offline collections and materials.

Lastly, Montanta State government publications dating back to 1874 are housed online at the Internet Archive, of all places.

More historical archives and research materials can be found at these excellent resources:

Historical Newspaper Archives Ancestry.com

Genealogy Tools US Historical Newspapers

European Historical Newspapers International Historical Newspapers

Court Record Searches Public Records Searches