Blue Skyways of Kansas 1997–2014

1. About Blue Skyways
2. History
3. Transition
4. What was available on Blue Skyways?
5. Where can the information be found now?
   1. Communities
      1. Counties
      2. Towns
   2. Heritage
      1. Museums
   3. Genealogy
      1. Societies
   4. Government
   5. Libraries

About Blue Skyways

Blue Skyways was a web hosting service for the Kansas library community sponsored by the State Library of Kansas. It was intended to help Kansas libraries serve as vital information utilities for their local communities.

History

John and Susan Howell created "Kansas on the Net" in 1995. In January, 1997, Blue Skyways of Kansas was started on the www.skyways.kumc.edu server operated by the University of Kansas Medical Center with an alternate address of skyways.lib.ks.us. On 21-Feb-1997, the Howell's secured a $10,000 Loleta D. Fyan Grant from the American Library Association to the Kansas Library Network Board to cover server space and training costs. In June, 1999, the skyways.org alias was registered.

Transition

Because Blue Skyways was no longer central to [their] mission, it and all of the associated city, library, organizational and genealogical websites were disabled by the State Library of Kansas on 1-Jul-2014.

What was available on Blue Skyways?

Blue Skyways offered thousands of pages of material about Kansas in five main categories.

• Communities
  Blue Skyways hosted home pages for over 250 Kansas communities. Information about K-12 schools, two-year and four-year colleges, and Regents universities was also included.
• Heritage
  Information about Kansas' history, museums, historical markers, photo archives and historical library collections were available on Skyways.
• Genealogy
  Genealogy resources.
• Government
  The Information Desk website of the Kansas State Library was an excellent place to start using the legislative and government collections of the Kansas State Library. This supplemented the Legislative Hotline that provides answers about legislative bills, bill status and related information.
• Libraries
  Skyways was home to a library directory in database form, and links to a catalog of holdings in over 700 libraries statewide. Online databases provided full-text articles on business, medical and research topics, as well as material for elementary and middle-school students. These resources allowed libraries to print needed articles on the spot. Skyways also served as a point of entry to the databases for users of the Kansas Library Card which allows library patrons to use the databases from home.

Where can the information be found now?

Some of the former Blue Skyways web sites have found new homes. Others have been preserved on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. This directory currently only lists sites that were previously hosted on Blue Skyways and have moved. If you are aware of any corrections, please contact us.

Communities

Counties

Towns

Heritage

Museums

Genealogy

In February 1997, Tom and Carolyn Ward became the state coordinators for the KSGenWeb Project. As part of the USGenWeb Project, the "idea was to provide a single entry point for all counties in Kansas, where collected databases would be stored." Contact information for local libraries, newspapers, and historical societies was compiled for each of the 105 Kansas counties. Students in Carolyn's Middle School classes at Baxter Springs transcribed A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans and many other historical Kansas works.

Societies

Government

Libraries