Search Our Collections

 

 

Welcome to Montgomery History’s online collections resources! We have several useful ways for you to understand the contents of our collections. You can also search and access many of our resources remotely. Please use the links below to get started on your research.

 

 


General Overview
Start here to understand what types of resources and materials we have, and where you can find them.

 

Montgomery County History Digital Collections (MCHDR)

Selected materials in our special collections are steadily being digitized and presented here, in their complete form, for at-home research. Once you enter the digital repository, you will be able to choose a specific collection to view, or you can perform keyword searches across all collections at once. 

 

Montgomery History Research Collections Catalogs

These catalogs provide descriptions of our research collection materials, housed at the Jane C. Sween Library and Special Collections in Rockville, MD. We also have this overview of our Library’s collection available for reference. Click on a catalog link below to search for:

Books and Manuscripts

Photographs

Special Collections

 

Montgomery History Museum Collection Catalog

This catalog provides images and descriptions of a portion of our extensive objects collection, encompassing the history of our county from the pre-contact era to the present day and curated by MH staff for over 75 years. Learn more about our museum collection

Objects Collection

 

 

Montgomery County Archives

This collection of government records from Montgomery County agencies and departments dates mostly from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Additional collections include records of civic organizations and citizen-activist groups, personal papers of key government leaders, and an extensive oral history collection. Finding aids to these collections, managed by Montgomery History, are available to view as PDFs.

 

 

Montgomery County Sentinel

Montgomery History’s microfilm holdings of the County’s newspaper of record have been digitized through the Maryland Digital Newspapers Project and the Sentinel is now searchable at the Library of Congress via their Chronicling America site. Extant issues from 1855-1963 are keyword-searchable, with options to download pages or clippings.
For a tutorial on how to most easily find and search the Sentinel on Chronicling America, see this document.

 

 

Digital Maryland

The following materials from Montgomery History’s special collections and other collections in Montgomery County have been digitized by the Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center’s Digital Maryland project, available to view online at the following links: