Hawaiian & Pacific Collections

The advent of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least) often brings visiting researchers to the Hawaiian and Pacific Collections. If you are planning a research trip to our collections, please make note of the fact that we will be closed on Sundays through August 29, 2010. Other essential information can be found on the library's Visitor Services page .

Hawai'i's newspaper publishing history dates back to 1834. Between that date and the year 2000, more than 1,200 distinct titles were published in the Islands. More and more newspapers are finding their way online in digital form, but just as many remain available only in print. Hawai'i Specialist librarian Dore Minatodani has created an online Library Guide to help navigate the many resources available for researching within Island newspapers. You can find that guide by clicking here . For more on researching in Hawai'i newspapers, see also our previous blog entries on the subject, by clicking here and here and also here .

The UH-M Library is now subscribing to "Films On Demand," which provides streaming access to educational videos in the humanities, social and natural sciences, business and health. The site allows searching for entire films or clips within films, and includes a fair amount of Hawai'i- and Pacific-related content. Films include: Made in Taiwan: Genes, Culture, and the Peopling of the South Pacific (a documentary featuring Nathan Rarere and Oscar Kightley, pictured here); Margaret Mead: Coming of Age (on Mead's life and work); The Empire Strikes Back (on various creole and pidgin English languages, including those of Melanesia in general and Papua New Guinea in particular); Where's the Catch: Pacific Fishing in Crisis and others. This is a subscription database, so access is limited to UH-Manoa students, faculty and staff. To reach the log-in portal, click here .  

In conjunction with the 6th annual Conference on Human Rights in Oceania , UH-M Pan-Pacific Association will host an evening of poetry, music, dance and performances on Thursday, April 29, at the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies' Halau o Haumea. For more information, click on the image at right.

In observance of U.S. Census month, Hawaiian Collection librarian Dore Minatodani has created an exhibit on Hawai'i 's censuses. Dore writes: "The U.S. Census Bureau first included Hawai'i in its decennial census in 1900. Prior to that, censuses had been conducted in Hawai'i since the time of Umialiloa. Reports of such counts date back to the missionary censuses of 1831-32 and 1835-36, and appear in published reports in increasing detail, revealing increasingly sophisticated methodology, through the 19th century. On exhibit are selections from theses reports, graphs depicting demographic trends in Hawai'i , and a 1910 enumeration sheet listing the household members of Queen Liliuokalani's residence." The exhibit will be on view throughout April in the Hawaiian and Pacific Collections reading room. For detailed information on materials relating to the history of the Hawai'i census, see also Dore's online library guide, "Hawai'i Cen...

Everyone at the Hawaiian and Pacific Collections congratulates Dr. Noelani Arista, who earlier this month received the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians. The prize honors the year's best-written doctoral dissertation on an American subject, and was awarded to Dr. Arista for her dissertation Histories of Unequal Measure: Euro-American Encounters with Hawaiian Governance and Law, 1793-1827 . The view a "reader-submitted" article about the award on the Honolulu Advertiser 's website, click here . To view an article in Brandeis University's Brandeis Now , click here . Dr. Arista is an Assistant Professor of History and UH-Manoa. Her M.A. Thesis, Davida Malo, ke kanaka o ka huliau: David Malo, a Hawaiian of the time of change , is available in the Hawaiian Collection. For bibliographic information, click here .

Graduate students and Chamoru poets Kisha Borja-Kicho'cho' ( MA Pacific Island Studies Candidate) and Angela "Anghet" Cruz ( MSW/MA Pacific Islands Studies Candidate) will read from their work this Friday, April 9, at the Kamakauokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies' Halau o Haumea. For more information, click on the image at right.