State of Montana Newsroom
Montana Historical Society Library & Archives to Reopen March 17
Free public open house set for March 13, featuring previews of the new space and technologies.
Helena, MT — The Montana Historical Society's Larry Len and LeAnne Peterson Library and Archives is pleased to announce it will reopen to the public on March 17, 2026. The Library and Archives has been closed for several years while the Montana Heritage Center was under construction. Following the Heritage Center's opening on December 3, 2025, Library and Archives staff spent dozens of hours unpacking, cleaning, and organizing the collections, which had been wrapped and protected throughout the construction process.
The Library and Archives will be housed in a new space on the first floor of the Montana Heritage Center, adjacent to the Charles M. Russell Gallery. The new facility includes larger research areas, a conference room, and updated research technology. Researchers will also have access to the Heritage Center's café, gift shop, and three museum galleries during their visits.
"We are so excited to finally welcome researchers and the public back into the Library and Archives," said Roberta Gebhardt, program manager for the Library and Archives. "Our team has worked hard to get the collections ready, and we can't wait to share this beautiful new space with the people of Montana."
The Larry Len and LeAnne Peterson Library and Archives is a non-circulating library, archives, and photograph archives. It provides on-site access to MTHS collections through its Reference Room, with select digitized materials also available online. Its holdings include over 1.25 million photographs, more than 10,600 moving images, over 470 manuscript collections, over 2,800 small collections, thousands of governmental records and published materials, more than 2,000 oral histories, and hundreds of additional collections yet to be processed.
To celebrate the reopening, the Montana Historical Society will host a free public open house on Friday, March 13, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Refreshments will be available, and staff will demonstrate new research tools including updated microfilm readers, an overhead book scanner, and the OrCam3, an assisted reading device for those with low vision. Small displays of materials from the archives and photograph archives will give visitors a sense of the collections available for research, and Library and Archives staff will be on hand throughout the afternoon to answer questions.
Research appointments for March 17 and later can be booked now at mths.mt.gov/research, or by emailing mthslibrary@mt.govor calling
For additional information on the Larry Len and LeAnne Peterson Library and Archives, email mthslibrary@mt.gov.