Tom Monto was born in 1961 in the United States and relocated with his family to Edmonton, Alberta in 1973. In 1982 he became a Canadian citizen and shortly after became involved in the New Democratic Party. Monto studied journalism at Grant MacEwan Community College in 1985-1986 and stood for election as an NDP candidate for the Olds-Didsbury constituency in the 1986 provincial election. His bid was unsuccessful and he stood again for the same constituency in the 1989 provincial election, also unsuccessfully. For both of these campaigns, Monto was a resident of Edmonton but stood for election in Olds-Didsbury in order to fill out the NDP provincial slate.

Monto continued his work with the NDP by working in the provincial party office and as a legislative assistant for NDP MLA Alex McEachern, followed in 1990 by working as the editor for the New Democrat, the official magazine of the Alberta New Democrats.

In 1990 Monto began to operate Varscona Books with his then-wife, Joan Stein. Varscona Books was later re-named Alhambra Books and is an Edmonton-based used bookstore. Monto sold the business in 2006 to Margy Josephson but continues to work there.

Monto is also an author and historian focusing on Edmonton and Alberta history. He has self-published several historical booklets under the Crang Publishing imprint, which is named after the late Edmonton Labour city councilor, Margaret Crang. These booklets include Solidarity and Anger: History of the Alberta Labour Movement (1988), Strathcona: The End-of-Steel (1988), The United Farmers of Alberta - A Movement, A Government (1988), Discussions of the Road Ahead: Strategies for Democratic Socialism. Report on The Road Ahead Conference, September 9-11 (1988), and Old Strathcona Before the Great Depression (2008 with a 2011 revision entitled Old Strathcona: Edmonton's Southside Roots).

The collection consists of records from a wide variety of sources that are all related to progressive movements and the Canadian left. There are particularly large amounts of records from the Alberta New Democrats and the Strathcona NDP constituency association as well as material from the Alberta Federation of Labour, the Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship, and the Edmonton Women's Coalition.

The NDP material consists of committee files from the Edmonton NDP Anti-War Committee, the Women's Committee, and the Environment Committee; scrapbooks and documents created by Franklin Foster related to his 1975 NDP campaign for the Bonnyville MLA seat; Alberta New Democrat publications, magazines, and reports; and minutes and administrative files from the Strathcona NDP constituency.

In addition to the Franklin Foster NDP material, there is also a copy of an abridged version of Foster's PhD dissertation on John E. Brownlee.

The non-NDP material consists of a conference packet from the 1965 Summer Seminar of the Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship; several papers and research documents published by leftist and progressive organizations such as the Revolutionary Marxist Group (Saskatchewan), the Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship, and the Edmonton Women's Coalition; newsletters and pamphlets from the Edmonton Women's Coalition; several issues of The Other Alberta Report, a progressive compendium of Alberta-focused news analysis; and Alberta Federation of Labour publications.