News of the Pacific Collection
Between March 5 and 31, the Bridge Gallery of UH-Manoa's Hamilton Library is hosting "Hidden Treasures from the UH-Manoa Pacific Collection," an exhibit of rare or unique Pacific Collection materials. Included is a selection of books, unpublished manuscripts, personal journals, prints, photographs, tapa, and more. The exhibit is associated with the 15-16 March 2006 conference, "Hidden Treasures: Accessing the Riches in Pacific Collections."
Place: The Bridge Gallery, first floor, UHM Hamilton Library
Dates: 5-31 March 2007
January 2007:
The Pacific Collection this month announced it will be joining the University of Hawai‘i's Center for Pacific Island Studies (CPIS) in hosting "Hidden Treasures: Accessing the Riches in Pacific Collections," the 2007 University of Hawai‘i Pacific Islands Studies Conference. The conference, which runs from March 15-16, 2007, will focus on Pacific library and archives collections, with the goal of highlighting materials that are not well known but have special value to indigenous peoples and to the general public. In discussing these materials, speakers from throughout the Pacific will also focus on issues surrounding access to these collections and digitization projects that are underway. For program, speaker bios, registration or more information, follow this link to the conference website. For information about Pacific Islands studies at UH-Manoa, follow this link to the CPIS website.
November 2006:
Dr. Karen M. Peacock, curator of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa Library’s Pacific Collection (a collection in which she has worked for the past thirty-three years), this month received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the closing ceremonies of the 16th annual Pacific Islands Association of Libraries and Archives (PIALA) Conference. The only other person to ever be honored with this award is Karen's father, Daniel J. Peacock, who is universally considered to be the "father of Micronesian librarianship." To read more about this award and Karen's ongoing work in Pacific librarianship, follow this link to the December online edition of Pacific Magazine.
Also in November, and after several months of intensive labor by Hamilton Library Pacific Specialist Lynette Furuhashi, the Pacific Collection went online with the Steve Thomas Traditional Micronesian Navigation Collection. Steve Thomas is the author of Last Navigator and creator of the film of the same name. The Steve Thomas Traditional Micronesian Navigation Collection is comprised of unpublished papers (including oral history transcripts), audiovisual and photographic materials, publications and miscellaneous items related primarily to traditional navigation on Satawal Island, Yap. The online edition features Steve's amazing collection of slides taken during his research for Last Navigator, and includes images of canoes, island scenes, feasts, dancing and traditional arts -- which, at last count, numbered 1,866 slides that had been scanned and posted online. Lynette was assisted in this massive undertaking by Librarian and Desktop Services Head Martha Chantiny and student workers Morgan Cloud and Kanani Naauao.
September 2006:
Stuart Dawrs has joined Special Collections as a Pacific specialist, replacing Jane Barnwell, who has accepted a position with Pacific Resources in Education and Learning (PREL). Stu has been working part time with Hawaiian and Pacific reference for the past year and a half and has done collection development work for the Pacific Collection. He holds a Master of Library and Information Sciences degree from UH-Manoa and is a former editor of the both the Honolulu Weekly and Hana Hou, the in-flight magazine of Hawaiian Airlines. In addition to his work in journalism, Stu recently completed an updating of Donald Mitchell’s Resource Units in Hawaiian Culture for Kamehameha Schools Press (publication scheduled for 2007), and contributed writing to the recently published Mo‘ili‘ili — The Life of a Community, a history of Honolulu's Mo‘illi‘ili neighborhood.
Also in September, the Pacific Collection welcomed librarian Genie Ruth Alvarado, who has been hired to work on flood replacement acquisitions for both the Hawaiian and Pacific Collections in the wake of the devastating October 30, 2004 flood. While the Hawaiian and Pacific Collections weren't directly inundated by the flood waters, they were heavily impacted nonetheless: In addition to Hawaii- and Pacific-related materials in the flooded Maps and Government Documents collections, both the Hawaiian and Pacific Collection lost all new titles waiting to be cataloged (along with the Maps and Government Documents collections, the library's Cataloging Department was also housed in the library's basement level.) Genie will thus be focusing full-time on tracking down these lost titles. Genie is a 2005 graduate of UH-Manoa's Library and Information Sciences Master's degree program.