Researcher receives Montana State’s 2023 Distinctive Collections Travel and Access Award

BOZEMAN — A researcher who plans to collaborate with tribal elders from the Northern Cheyenne nation will conduct research at the Montana State University Library this summer after receiving a travel and access award.

Antonie Dvorakova, a fellow at the Palacky University Olomouc in the Czech Republic, received MSU’s Distinctive Collections Travel and Access Award. The $2,500 award, which is being given for the third time, will help fund her travel to Bozeman this summer.

Dvorakova’s work in Montana will utilize MSU Library collections and help Dvorakova continue her decades of work with the Northern Cheyenne Nation, said Jodi Allison-Bunnell, head of Archives and Special Collections at the MSU Library. She added that Dvorakova plans to collaborate with tribal elders.

Allison-Bunnell said Dvorakova is especially interested in studying the papers of Verne Dusenberry housed in MSU’s Archives and Special Collections. The papers provide a “rich source” of material about the Montana and Northern Plains Indians, according to the library’s description.

“We are so pleased to welcome the first international visitor to receive this award, and to offer both our Northern Cheyenne-focused materials as well as the many other resources of the library,” Allison-Bunnell said.

The Merrill G. Burlingame Archives and Special Collections at MSU features manuscript collections on the West and the Greater Yellowstone region, with particular strengths in agricultural history; the world’s most comprehensive collection of trout and salmonid books; select records of MSU; area-focused books; and a substantial collection of angling oral histories.

“I think that faculty and grad students will be interested in her work,” said Janet Ore, director of the MSU Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West, a program named for the distinguished writer which fosters the integrated study of the North American West. “I know I’m curious to meet her and hear more.”

At the Palacky University Olomouc, Dvorakova conducts research on diversity, equity and inclusion in education and employment in the United Kingdom and Czech Republic. She has a doctorate in cultural psychology from the University of Chicago.

The award is a collaborative effort of the MSU Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the North American West, the Archives and Special Collections department of the MSU Library and the Friends of MSU Library, a fundraising group formed in 1994 to help the library develop its collections, spaces, programs and community presence.

The Distinctive Collections Travel and Access Award is jointly funded by the MSU Friends of the Library and the Doig Center. It will be offered annually through at least 2025, according to Allison-Bunnell.

The MSU Library offers research and information resources to MSU’s students and faculty, as well Montana citizens and members of the state's business community.