Montana History Bibliographies

Want your students to write research papers based on both primary and secondary source research? Want them to focus on topics that they can’t buy papers for?

Do I have a deal for you….

As you may know, the Montana Historical Society is a proud cosponsor of National History Day in Montana.

To encourage students to engage with Montana history for their history day projects, our staff created bibliographies for Montana history topics related to the history day theme (which this year is “Revolution, Reaction, and Reform.”) Topics range from Montana’s World War II conscientious objector camps (reaction to war) to the Chinese experience in Montana (reaction against Chinese immigration and reaction by the Chinese to discrimination), Indian boarding schools (a failed reform), and fire policy (revolutionized in reaction to the 1910 fires). As you can see—almost anything can fit under the “Revolution, Reaction, Reform” mantle, so basically staff created bibliographies for a few of their favorite Montana history topics.

Find the bibliographies here.

We think these bibliographies will be great for National History Day projects—but we also think they would be great for any class in which students are required to conduct research projects (Montana history, Language Arts, American history….)

Each bibliography includes secondary and primary sources. Some of these sources are only available at the historical society; many others have been digitized and are available online.

Of course, we hope you’ll consider participating in National History Day (including the state competition to be held in Helena, April 21). You can find more information about Montana’s National History Day program here, here, or here, or by contacting Montana NHD Coordinator Tom Rust. 

But whether or not your students participate in National History Day, we hope to these bibliographies provide useful starting points for research projects.

If you do have students use our bibliographies, please let us know. If you have a topic you’d like to see us create a bibliography for, let us know that too. (No promises, but we’ll try.)

And if you WILL have students participating in NHD, please drop Tom Rust a note so he can plan.