Hawaiian & Pacific Collections

The Hawaiian & Pacific Collections have entered into a three-year trial subscription with AsiaPacificfilms.com , which allows streaming online access to complete films. At present, the library is subscribing to four films: The Land Has Eyes (pictured); Act Of War: The Overthrow Of The Hawaiian Nation ; Nation Within ; and Simple Courage . Access is limited to UH-Manoa students, faculty and staff -- the films can be reached by clicking on the titles above; alternately, to access a "group record" that links to all four titles, click here . For other online, Hawaiian & Pacific film resources available to UH-M students, faculty and staff, see also our previous entry on "Films On Demand."

Several local news outlets, including the Star- Advertiser , are reporting the passing of master navigator Mau Piailug.   (The photo at right was taken in June 1984 by Steve Thomas, and is part of the Pacific Collection's Steve Thomas Traditional Micronesian Navigation online photo archive, which documents Thomas' time living and studying with Piailug and other Satawalese navigators.)

The Hawaiian & Pacific Collections Lecture Series and Library Forum Committee presents: "A Pacific Librarian/Archivist: walking a fine line while holding a huge umbrella" A presentation by Eleanor Kleiber Librarian & Archivist of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Noumea, New Caledonia Where: Hamilton Library, room 301. Weds. July 21. When 9 a.m. - 11 a.m. Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided. What: Libraries and archives are often grouped together, either intentionally or by default under vague amalgamations called knowledge- or information management. As the Librarian/Archivist of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Eleanor Kleiber is putting the logic of this grouping to the test at an organizational level, while also witnessing it from a regional perspective. This presentation will discuss the practical results of combining library and archives functions. Who: Eleanor Kleiber g...

Nearly six years after the October 2004 flood devastated the ground floor of Hamilton Library, displaced departments and collections are being moved back into the renovated basement. Th e Government Documents and Maps Collections have returned to the ground floor of Hamilton Library, Room 6.  Summer hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 am-5:00 pm; closed Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.   The Government Documents collection is an open-shelf collection, and walk-in users are welcome. To use materials in the Map Collection , it is strongly recommended that appointments be made ahead of time, but walk-ins will also be accommodated. The new GIS laboratory and classroom is currently being set up, and GIS services are anticipated to resume by the start of the fall semester -- in the meantime, GIS services will continue to be available on an appointment basis. Both the Government Documents and Maps Collections have extensive Hawaii- and Pacific-related holdings -- their...

The Pacific Collection recently completed work on its latest digital collection, Nuclear Diaspora: Bikini and Enewetak .   The United States conducted more than eighty nuclear weapons tests on and around Bikini and Enewetak Atolls (Marshall Islands) between 1946 and 1958. The 878 images in this collection span the years from 1946-1988, and document the lives of Bikini and Enewetak islanders after they were relocated from their home islands as a result of these tests. The images derive from the anthropological fieldwork of Dr. Leonard "Len" Mason and Dr. Robert Kiste, both of whom served as longtime faculty members at the University of Hawaii-Manoa prior to their retirement from fulltime teaching (Mason in 1969 and Kiste in 2002).  To date the Pacific Collection has posted more than 13,000 images online via seven collections. Links to each collection can be found on the Pacific Collection web-page.

We regret to note the passing of Dr. Jack A. Tobin , a highly respected Pacific anthropologist who devoted his life's work to the Marshall Islands. Tobin first went to the Marshalls in 1950 as a student of Dr. Len Mason, to work on the Pacific Science Board's Coral Atoll Project (CAP) -- an initiative meant to study the needs of atoll dwellers with limited resources and growing populations. Arno Atoll was chosen as the first CAP research site.  Later in 1950, Tobin was hired as an anthropological field consultant by the Civil Administration Unit of Naval Operations. During the Trust Territory Administration era, he served as the sole district anthropologist for the Marshall Islands, a position he held through 1957. Between 1967 and 1975, he served as community development adviser to the Marshall Islands. (The photo above shows Dr. Tobin in 1957, preparing to land on Ejit. It is taken from the Pacific Collection's online Trust Territory Archives Photo Collection ....

As part of an ongoing project funded by several large National Endowment for the Humanities grants, Hawaiian Collection curator Joan Hori announced today that another round of 19th- and early-20th century Hawai'i newspapers has been added to the Library of Congress' open-access "Chronicling America" site, where they are now full-text searchable. The newspapers in this project are all English-language editions, and complement the ongoing work on The Ho'olapa'i: Hawaiian Nupepa Collection (a joint venture of Alu Like, Inc., Bishop Museum and UH-Hilo's Hale Kuamo'o) to digitize Hawaiian language newspapers.  For more on the Library's participation in the Chronicling America project, click here . For more on researching in early Hawaii newspapers (both English and Hawaiian language) see also this previous blog entry . Below is the complete list of newspapers currently available on the Chronicling America site. For each newspaper listed, the d...