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System Maintenance
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The City of Boston is experiencing a maintenance update with the Special Item Collection system. Please check back on Wednesday, December 18.
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City Archives Digital Access Initiative

We’re digitizing our records and making them available to the public. Through a variety of collaborations, we’ve scanned over two million pages of City records and over 13,000 City photographs to make them available to the public online.

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The records of our City belong to the people of our City. Since 1989, the City Archives has worked to enable Bostonians to easily access the records that affect their daily lives and preserve the memory of their diverse communities.

Providing digital access to our records opens our City’s rich historic record to researchers of all types.  

  • Our partners
    • Family Search scanned all of the City’s tax records from 1822-1918, and is currently scanning our voter records.  This is work that has been done at no cost to the City.
    • Iron Mountain and Northeastern University worked with us to digitize letters sent to Mayor Thomas Menino’s office after the Boston Marathon Bombing, as well as a group of items from the makeshift Marathon Memorial in Copley Square.

Digital resources

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Archives and Records on Flickr

You can check out more than 13,000 digitized photos of the City of Boston.

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Digital records portal

Find born digital and digitized records, including past versions of the City’s websites.

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Search City tax records

We digitized the City's tax records in collaboration with Family Search.

Boston Marathon Memorial collections

We worked with Northeastern University and Iron Mountain to digitize items from the makeshift memorials after the Marathon attack.

Go to the Marathon collections

Who's Involved:

Archives and Records Management
617-635-1195
  • Our partners
    • Family Search scanned all of the City’s tax records from 1822-1918, and is currently scanning our voter records.  This is work that has been done at no cost to the City.
    • Iron Mountain and Northeastern University worked with us to digitize letters sent to Mayor Thomas Menino’s office after the Boston Marathon Bombing, as well as a group of items from the makeshift Marathon Memorial in Copley Square.
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