About the Montana History Portal

Mission

The Montana History Portal encourages cultural institutions to digitize historic and contemporary resources reflecting Montana’s rich cultural heritage and to make them freely available for lifelong learning.

Program Description

The Montana History Portal (Portal) is an online source for digital collections relating to Montana’s cultural heritage. In part, these collections document the Montana experience. Access is free and open through the Internet. Many of these items are digitized copies of historic material, some items are contemporary. All serve as a resource for education, business, pleasure, and lifelong learning.

Many Montana libraries, museums, archives, and cultural institutions add materials to this collection. Contents may include maps, copies of photographs, rare books, historic documents, diaries, oral histories, audio and video clips, paintings, illustrations and art.

For more information on becoming a contributing institution please click here.

Contact us

For more information about how to use or how to contribute content to the Montana History Portal please email us at mmp@mt.gov.

Staff Directory

Legal Information

Copyright Statement: All items available through or included in the Montana History Portal may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Use of some items may also be subject to additional restrictions imposed by the copyright owner and/or the contributing institution. Transmission, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use under the copyright laws generally requires written permission of the copyright owner. Users must make their own assessments of rights in light of their intended use. Contributing institutions are those who make digital content available through the Montana History Portal. These institutions may or may not own the digital and/or original materials and may or may not own the copyright to the materials. Users have an obligation to determine and satisfy any copyright or other use restrictions when copying, publishing, or otherwise distributing or using materials available through or included in the Montana History Portal. Please contact the contributing institution for available information regarding copyright status of a particular digital item. The nature of historical archival and manuscript collections often makes it difficult to determine the copyright status of an item. Whenever possible, the contributing institutions provide available information about copyright owners and other restrictions. The contributing institutions provide this information as a service to aid users in determining the copyright status of an item. Ultimately, however, as noted above, it is the user’s responsibility to use an item according to the terms governing that use. The contributing institutions are eager to hear from any copyright owners who are not properly identified so that appropriate information may be provided to users.

Defense, Indemnification, and Hold Harmless: Contributing institutions will be solely responsible for their content. Contributing institutions and users agree that as a condition of contributing or using materials available through or included in the Montana History Portal, they will defend, indemnify and hold harmless the Montana State Library from and against any and all claims, suits, actions, demands or proceedings (whether threatened, asserted or filed) and all related damages, losses, liabilities, costs and expenses (including but not limited to reasonable attorney fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) contributing institutions’ and users’ unlawful or improper use of the services, including, but not limited to, copyright violation, and (b) any actual or alleged violation of proprietary or nonproprietary rights, including, but not limited to, defamation, libel, and rights of privacy or publicity, by any contributing institution’s content.

Privacy and Publicity Rights: Privacy and publicity rights reflect interests separate and distinct from copyright interests. Users of materials available through the Montana History Portal bear the responsibility to make individualized determinations as to whether privacy and/or publicity rights are implicated by the nature of the materials and how they use such materials.

Conditions of Use: By their use of these digital items, users agree to follow these conditions of use: all users have an obligation to determine whether their use of copyright-protected material may be prohibited or restricted, or may be available for fair use under copyright laws. (See Warning below.) All users have an obligation to determine whether their use of material may implicate privacy and/or publicity rights. (See Warning below.) Materials may not be used for any commercial purpose without prior written permission from the contributing institution and the copyright owner (if not the contributor). Materials may not be re-published in print or electronic form without prior written permission from the contributing institution and the copyright owner (if not the contributor). Materials may not be mounted on an additional server for public use, or for use by a set of subscribers without prior written permission from the contributing institution and the copyright owner (if not the contributor).

Warning: Users should be aware that materials made available through this website may be subject to additional restrictions including but not limited to copyright and the rights of privacy and publicity, of parties other than the contributing institutions. Users are solely responsible for determining the existence of such rights and for obtaining any permissions that may be necessary for the proposed use. If the copyright owner is not identified by the contributing institution, the contributing institution should be contacted for additional information.