Hawaiian & Pacific Collections

Below is quoted from an online release sent out by the UH-Manoa Center for Pacific Islands Studies: "'Homealani' will be shown Sunday, Dec. 13, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Princess Ruth Keelikolani Auditorium of the Kamehameha Schools Kapalama Campus, sponsored by Ke Alii Pauahi Foundation. Admission is free and there will be a question and answer session following the film. 'Homealani' is a film about filmmaker Ann Marie N Kirk's grandfather Colonel Oliver H Kupan. Kirk, an MA student at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, says, 'It's a very personal film, but I hope people who see it will see the story of my grandfather speaks to many Hawaiians of his time who had to learn how to navigate and find balance living in a both a Hawaiian world and the Western world.'"

The Royal Society, Britain's academy of science, is celebrating its 350th anniversary this year. As one means of marking the event, the society has mounted the Letters to the Royal Society online, via a site called Trailblazing . Among other items of potential interest to Hawaii and Pacific researchers are the letters of Captain James Cook. Researchers should also note that the UH-Manoa library subscribes to multiple databases which provide full-text, online access to publications of the society, particularly the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which began publishing in the 1600s. To find the Transactions (which also include various items authored by Cook, among others), search the phrase "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London" (without quotation marks) in the Library's Electronic Resources portal (the majority of these resources are subscription databases, meaning that users are required to have a valid UH-Manoa ID to access the...

If you are a currently enrolled student or faculty member at the University of Hawaii-Manoa and are planning to visit a university library outside of Hawaii (or if you are a researcher from abroad planning on visiting our campus), you should know that the UHM Library participates in two reciprocal programs. T he Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) Reciprocal Circulation Program allows students and faculty to borrow books from more than a dozen university and college libraries in the continental United States. UH-Manoa faculty members are also eligible for the OCLC Faculty Reciprocal Borrowing Card , which allows access to roughly 200 U.S. research libraries. For more information on these programs (including a list of GWLA reciprocal libraries), click her e . For a list of participating OCLC institutions, click here . To make use of these privledges, UHM students and faculty need to contact either Naomi Chow (ILL/ESP Librarian) or Sandra Ohashi (Circulation Manager) in the library...

Poets Angela T. Hoppe-Cruz (MSW/MA Pacific Islands Studies Candidate) & Kisha Borja-Kicho`cho` (MA Pacific Islands Studies Candidate) will read from their work This Friday, November 20, from 5 - 7 p.m. at Halau o Haumea, Kamakauokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. Both women are Chamoru and were born and raised on the island of Guam. For more information, click on the flyer at left.

Owing to planned server maintenance , UH-Manoa Library's Voyager catalog will go offline Wednesday, November 25, at 4 p.m. It is currently estimated that the catalog will be unavailable until at least noon on Saturday, November 28. Other of the library's subscription databases may also be unavailable during this time-frame. If you are planning on requesting materials from the Hawaiian and Pacific Collections' closed shelf holdings--i.e. if you plan on using anything other than our reference materials--between 4 and 5 p.m. on Wednesday the 25th, you will need to do so by filling out a "manual paging slip" and turning it in to our fifth-floor circulation counter. (Paging slips are available at either our circulation counter or H&P reference desk).

The Pacific collection wishes to announce that this year's Janet Bell Pacific Research Prize contest has been cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and hope to reinstate the contest in 2010.

The below message comes from Hamilton Library's Interlibrary Loan Department, and includes important information regarding services during the upcoming Winter Interim period ( Saturday December 19, 2009 - Sunday January 10, 2010) . Due to the upcoming Winter Interim Closure and reduced staffing related to Library and University budget cuts, please note the following: UHM patrons should submit their ILL requests by December 4 th To assure processing and receipt before winter interim closure. Closed to the public Dec. 19, 2009 – Jan. 10, 2010 Reopen to the public on Jan. 11, 2010 Online ILL system will be unavailable Dec. 18 th 5 p.m. to Jan. 3, 2010 Requests cannot be submitted; electronic articles cannot be accessed. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause.

Below is quoted from a press release put out by the UH-Manoa Department of English (for more information, click here ) : The Ninth Fall Writers' Festival will bring locally and nationally renowned writers to UH Manoa and Kapi'olani Community College campuses. Three literary genres will be represented: fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. The festival has brought a wide range of writers to Hawai'i since 1998. Each festival has offered emphases on culture and location with writers from Samoa, Indonesia, the Caribbean, New Zealand, Hawai'i, Canada and the Mainland USA.  Guest authors have strong connections with the communities of Hawai'i, including Kanaka Maoli authors Carlos Andrade, Davianna McGregor, Brandy Nalani McDougall, Lurline McGregor and Ty Kawika Tengan, who have each just published significant first books, and represent a new wave of literary and scholarly publishing by Hawaiians. In addition, distinguished Hawaiian playwright and alumna Victo...

Following is excerpted from a press release received from East-West Center , for an upcoming art exhibit and performance. For complete details, click here : Exhibition: November 1, 2009-January 3, 2010 East-West Center Gallery, Honolulu, Hawai`i Performance: Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009, 8:00-9:15 p.m. Imin Center-Jefferson Hall, 1777 East-West Road A touring exhibition from Gab Titui Cultural Centre, Thursday Island, Torres Strait, Australia. Guest Curator: Robyn Fernandez. Exhibition Design: Michael Schuster & Lynne Najita. This exhibit features traditional and contemporary dance masks, headdresses, drums, and other dance accoutrements. Video and photography provide context for appreciating this unique indigenous art form. The performance is free and open to the public, and is expected to draw a large audience. The organizers advise coming early as seating is first-come, first-served.

Those interested in the impact of climate change on Pacific islands might visit the website of the Isles of Scilly Earth Summit , which is currently featuring a series of short videos made during the October 2009 summit. Presentors include Ursula Rakova (Cartaret Islands, Boungainville Province, Papua New Guinea); Fiu Mataese (Samoa); Dr. John Ewan (Tiri Matangi, Aotearoa/New Zealand); as well as others representing island communities from outside the Pacific. In addition to the videos linked off the homepage, information about the speakers (and in some cases added video content) can be found under the "Earth" tab on the summit homepage.

Until relatively recently, those looking for information in Hawai'i newspapers published before 1929 had limited options. That was the year in which the first indexes for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser were published; for newspapers prior to that, indexing was at best sporadic (and often non-existent), leaving researchers in many cases to pore over issue after issue of microfilmed paper in search of specific information. The Ho'olapa'i: Hawaiian Nupepa Collection (a joint venture of Alu Like, Inc., Bishop Museum and UH-Hilo's Hale Kuamo'o) now provides unprecedented online access to Hawaiian-language newspapers published between 1834 and 1948. Meanwhile, two projects being undertaken by the UH-Manoa Library are aiding in access to the early English-language newspapers (which also began publishing in the 1830s). The Bob Krauss Index : In 2006 the Hawaiian Collection received the private research index created by the late Bob Krauss, lon...

We regret to note the passing of Douglas L. Oliver , who died peacefully in his sleep on October 30, 2009. Born in Rushton, Louisiana in 1913, Dr. Oliver held an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Harvard and a D.Phil. from the University of Vienna. While his early fieldwork focused on Bougainville, he would over the course of his career write widely about the Pacific. His publications include Studies in the Anthropology of Bougainville, Solomon Islands (1949); Planning Micronesia's Future (1951); The Pacific Islands (first published in 1951, and subsequently published in several revised editions, most recently in 1989); A Solomon Island Society: Kinship and Leadership Among the Siuai of Bougainville (1955); Ancient Tahitian Society (1974); Two Tahitian Villages (1981); Return to Tahiti: Bligh's Second Breadfruit Voyage (1988); Oceania: The Native Cultures of Australia and the Pacific (1989); Black Islanders: A Personal Perspective on Bougainville 1937-1991 (199...

Writer, filmmaker and UH-Manoa Center for Pacific Islands Studies director Vilsoni Hereniko will appear on Oceanic Cable's 'Olelo channel 55 on Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 8 p.m. to discuss Film As a Colonizing Medium.