The Library is currently migrating its large collection of digital historic images to a new software platform. While most users won’t notice a significant change when the migration is complete, the new platform will give our staff more flexibility and power in adding and modifying descriptive records for our collection of photographs, documents, postcards and maps. We will be able to process our backlog more quickly and grow the size of the collection substantially in the coming years.

An unfortunate consequence of our data migration is that we need to take the entire collection offline while the work is completed. The site will remain accessible, but visitors will not be able to search and display items from the digital collection in its current form.

The upgrade process will impact these Library local history sites:

• KCHistory.org: searches will be redirected to an archived version of the site with limited functionality
• Civil War on the Western Border: visitors can access the entire collection on the Missouri Digital Heritage website

The following content will remain available:

KCHistory.org:

• Local History Blog
• Photograph Collection Finding Aids | Special Collection Finding Aids
• Biographies
• This Week in KC History
• Research Guides
• Informational Pages About the Missouri Valley Room

• Essays & Articles
• Timeline
• Maps
• Lesson Plans

We anticipate the collections for both sites coming back online in summer 2019.

We realize that this is a hardship for the researchers and history enthusiasts who make KCHistory and Civil War on the Western Border so popular, and we made every effort to avoid this scenario. We are willing to do anything we can to help you find the material you need. Please reach out to us with image or research requests and we will try to accommodate you as well as we can.

In the meantime, you may benefit from these other resources that can stand-in for some of our digital collections:

1940 Tax Assessment Photographs
This collection provides photos of houses and other buildings, taken all over Kansas City during 1940.

Fire Insurance Maps Online (FIMo)
FIMo offers color Fire Insurance Maps, Real Estate Atlases, Plat Books, and other historical maps showing building structures, building construction details, property ownership, property uses, and other useful information for Kansas and Missouri.

The Pendergast Years: Kansas City in the Jazz Age & Great Depression
This site contains many photos and documents for the period 1918-1941, many of them repurposed from the KCHistory site.

KCHistory Archive
This page will allow you to search an archived version of KCHistory where you can still discover photos and other items. Once you enter the archive, search will not function.

Missouri Digital Heritage 
The entire digital collection featured in the Civil War website is also available on this state history website.