2012 Dave Walter Research Fellowship

The Montana Historical Society Research Center is pleased to announce the availability of the 2012 Dave Walter Research Fellowship.  


This fellowship will be awarded to two Montana residents involved in a public history project focused on exploring local history. The award is intended to help Montanans conduct research on their towns, counties, and regions using resources at the Montana Historical Society. Research can be for any project related to exploring local history; including exhibit development, walking tours, oral history projects, building history/preservation, county or town histories, archaeological research, class projects, etc.  Fellowship awards of $1,250 each will be given to two researchers.


Recipients will be expected to:
• travel to the MHS to conduct research 
• spend a minimum of one week in residence conducting research 
• provide a copy of their final product or a report on their completed project to the MHS Research Center 


Applications for the Dave Walter Research Fellowship are evaluated on the following criteria:
• suitability of the research to the Society's collections 
• potential of the project to make a contribution to local history 
• experience in conducting local history research 


The application must include a cover letter; a project proposal, not to exceed 3 pages in length, describing the research, including the specific collections at the Montana Historical Society that you intend to use; a 1-2 page resume, and a letter of recommendation.


Applications must be postmarked no later than March 1, 2012, and sent to: 
Dave Walter Research Fellowship Selection Committee
Montana Historical Society
PO Box 201201
Helena, MT 59620-1201


Applications can also be submitted via email to mhslibrary@mt.gov. Applications submitted via email must be received on March 1, 2012.  


Announcement of the award will be made in early April. Questions about the fellowship should be directed to mhslibrary@mt.gov or 406-444-2681.


For more information about the Dave Walter Research Fellowship or the Montana Historical Society and its collections see: http://mhs.mt.gov/home.aspx. 

Teaching with the Library of Congress Blog

I am sometimes asked how I find the time to identify the resources I promote through this blog. Do I spend most of my working day surfing the internet? Well, actually, no. 


But I do subscribe to a few listservs and blogs, which I cherry pick for your enjoyment. 
Among them is the Teaching with the Library of Congress Blog, dedicated to promoting the most effective techniques for using Library of Congress primary sources in the classroom. 
Among my favorite of their recent posts is Snow Stories in the Library of Congress Primary Sources. 


My other best source of material are those among you who forward me interesting links. (You know who you are and thanks!) You can join the team. If you come across a resource, idea, have a great teaching tip, don’t be shy—drop me a line. 

Online sources for historical images, documents, videos, and audio

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you did not resolve to spend less time online—if you did, this post is not for you.

The rest of you, however, might find this link, sent by Billings elementary school librarian Ruth Ferris, interesting.

The link is to a post by David Bryne, who blogs at freetech4teachers.com. Titled “9 Sources for Historical Images,Documents, Videos, and Audio”, it includes some great links (along with useful hints for using those links).

Byrne recommended several sites I had not yet explored, like the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox (music from all eras) and The Travel Film Archive, “a collection of hundreds of travel films recorded between 1900 and 1970.” (A search of Montana revealed a 1900 silent film clip of a train arriving in Helena and six promotional films for Glacier, from the 1920s through 1950s.)

Other links Byrne recommended were old favorites, including Google Books, described in his post as “one of my go-to places for old books and magazines.” I use Google Books often for historical research—it is a great tool for all of us who don’t have easy access to a research library, and it’s amazing what you can find.

For example, try typing in Month Day Montana--e.g., July 14 Montana--into the search field in Google Books and then skimming the entries that pop up. In this instance I learned that, according to Montana: History of Two Centuries, miners uncovered significant placer deposits at Last Chance Gulch, on
July 14, 1864. (I discovered this neat trick when I was looking for “this day in Montana history” items).

Or enter a company name—I did this recently with Crane and Ordway (a plumbing company that built a warehouse in Billings in 1920) and uncovered a full text version of their 1922 periodical, The Valve World.

Happy surfing—and make sure to come up for air.

Nominate Your Favorite Teacher

On the assumption that everyone is much too busy this time of year to read blogs, this will be my last missive until the New Year.

But perhaps the holiday is a good time to think of the great history teachers you know and to consider nominating one of them for the Gilder Lehrman Institute's National History Teacher of the Year Award. Montana is filled with worthy candidates and the application process (at least for the nominator) is quick and easy.

You can find more here: www.gilderlehrman.org/nhtoy.

Blogs I Like, Episode 1

I recently subscribed to the Extreme History Project Blog—(motto: “History isn’t pretty.”)

They’ve had some good (and short!) posts—including these three:

• “What indigenous people look like”
• “Is your Halloween costume respectful or offensive” (no longer seasonal but still thought-provoking). 

Their blog also led me to “This is Anthropology,” a presentation developed in response to a Florida governor’s  statement criticizing spending education funding on majors like anthropology—but which is actually a really good answer to the “what do you do with an anthropology degree” and could get students thinking about careers they never considered.

What blogs/listservs do you subscribe to that you think I (or other educators) would find worthwhile? Let me know and I’ll compile a list.

NEH Summer Institutes/Workshops

Winter finally hit Helena with below 0 temperatures. I don't ski--so the only thing left to do is ... start thinking about summer.

I recently received an announcement for an NEH Summer 2012 Institute for School Teachers—“American Frontiers in Global Perspective.”    

This is just one of many opportunities for stipended professional development offered through NEH. NEH has two primary programs for school teachers:

• NEH Summer Seminars or Institutes, which run from two to five weeks, and 
• NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops, which run for one week. 

The topics addressed in these programs range from a five-week seminar on four classics of Native American literature (including the Surrounded and Winter in the Blood) to a weeklong seminar, "Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution."

The Montana Historical Society offered a weeklong Landmarks program last year, during which we shared Montana's mining history with amazing teachers from across the United States. Those who participated came away energized--in part by Montana, and the history we presented--but even more so through sharing ideas with dedicated, committed fellow teachers.

Information on the many programs offered and more details about stipends, etc., can be found here:

• Landmarks.  
• Institutes and Seminars.  

Application deadline for both programs is March 1.

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.