University of Hawaii at Manoa Library
[ Student Equity, Excellence, and Diversity ]Student Equity, Excellence, and Diversity

The Annexation Of Hawaii:
A Collection Of Documents On The World Wide Web

Final Report and Evaluation July, 2002

Martha Chantiny and Dore Minatodani, UHM Library
Noenoe Silva, Assistant Professor, Political Science Department
Amount: $3,500.00

Introduction
Description
Accomplishments
Assessment
Expenditures
Continuation of Project


Questions and comments: speccoll@hawaii.edu


INTRODUCTION

In December 2001, a Diversity and Equity grant of $3,500.00 was received. The funds were awarded to digitize and provide electronic access via the world wide web to documents of primary importance to discussions of the role of the United States in the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893 and the legitimacy of the annexation of Hawai'i by the United States. The documents proposed for scanning included: material popularly known as the "Blount Report" of 1894, and the "Morgan Report" of 1893-1894; the Hawaiian anti-annexation petitions of 1897 and Queen Lili'uokalani's protest of the 1897 proposed treaty of annexation; the (Hawaiian) Citizens' Committee protest of the same; the joint resolution of Hui Aloha 'Aina and Hui Kalai'aina protesting annexation after the passage of the Newlands Resolution, and the Congressional debates on the Organic Act of Hawai'i, 1899-1900.

DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT

The project funded student assistants to scan and convert document pages into text files to enable people to search for keywords and names within the documents. Keyword searching provides a powerful tool that enhances the use of traditional print indexes such as those found in the back of published volumes. The scanned document pages are also presented as PDF image files, to maintain visual coherence, and where applicable, as MS Word formatted documents. Access to this important material on the web increases their availability to a broader audience who may be unable or even unwilling to travel to libraries. Online access also allows for multiple users at any given time, whereas a publication or microfilm reel can only be read by one individual at a time. While information access is of primary concern in this project, a corollary benefit is the preservation of 100-year-old documents, often in fragile condition. In the early 1990s the University of Hawai'i Library began its efforts to preserve these documents. The Library's Preservation Department created bound photocopies of the Blount Report, which were made available to libraries and individuals at cost (approximately $200). These limited copies are no longer available for purchase, at a time when sovereignty issues continue to be widely discussed and studied.

The lengths of the individual documents are shown below. The project scanned the material to image files (TIF), converted the images to text files (OCR) and PDF (Acrobat), loaded the text into web pages (HTML) and electronically indexed the pages using the library web server indexing program (SWISH-E). The anti-annexation petitions cannot be converted to text files during this project because the content is handwritten signatures, but they can be indexed by island and place name.

Blount Report: 1455 pages
Morgan Report: 773
Anti-annexation petitions and accompanying documents: 660
Debates on organic act: 322
Queen's Protest 25 (approx.)
TOTAL 3235 pages

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SUMMARY OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS

At the end of December 2001, we posted the following job order with Student Employment.
==============
Hamilton Library Job Order for Student Assistant
Department: Desktop Network Services
Requested by: Martha Chantiny Phone: 956-2473
Requestor's Email Address: chantiny@hawaii.edu
Type of Fund, Special: SEED Grant
Job Title: DIGITIZING PROJECT SA V Wage: A5
Supervision level: Works Independently
Supervises others: No
Number of positions available: 1
Hours per week: 10-19 Start Date: ASAP (START 1/2/02)
Schedule: FLEX: MON-SUN -9AM-8PM (2 HR BLOCKS)

The job description was posted on the student employment office web page as follows:
POSITION: DIGITIZING PROJECT SA V
WAGES: A5
DESCRIPTION: SCAN PAPER DOCUMENTS AND MAPS, TRANSFER IMAGES; OCR CONVERSION OF IMAGES TO TEXT FILES, CREATE & MAINTAIN WEB PAGES
COMPANY: UH MANOA
LOCATION: HAMILTON, DNS DEPT.
SKILLS: GOOD WRITTEN AND ORAL COMMUNICATION, MIN 2 YRS EXPER. W/ PCs & WEB PAGE WORK, DESIRABLE EXP. WITH FLATBED SCANNERS, IMAGE PROCESSING AND OCR SOFTWARE; POSITION IS GRANT FUNDED PROJECT TO SCAN HAWAI'I ANNEXATION DOCUMENTS
SCHEDULE: FLEX: MON-SUN 9AM-8PM (2 HOUR BLOCKS OF TIME)
HOURS: 10-19
START: ASAP (START JAN 2, 2002)

We did not receive any applicants until late January. Therefore we hired two students in order to use the funds in the time allotted. The first, a Ph.D. candidate (with a Masters in Pacific Island Studies) started work on February 6. The second, a 4th year Hawaiian Studies student, started in mid-February.

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ASSESSMENT

We requested an award to cover 800 hours of student assistance at $ 8.75 per hour = $7,000.00. The award received was half the amount. Less scanning was accomplished than was originally hoped. However, significant progress was made and templates set up for every document to insure efficient continuation of the project. The web site is in place, and the templates uploaded. They may be viewed at: http://web.archive.org/web/20071109052454/http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/annexation.html [current site is: http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/annexation.php].

During the spring semester, the SEED funded student assistants scanned 258 pages of the Congressional Debates on the Organic Act of Hawai'i, created 229 web pages and 251 MS Word pages. The Organic Acts scanning and processing were completed in June (323 web pages, MS Word documents and 339 PDF files). See the web page: http://web.archive.org/web/20071111112854/http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/organic.html [current site is: http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/organic.php].

When a greater percentage of the documents are close to fully scanned and processed, then we will follow through with plans to notify appropriate instructional faculty, libraries, and educational and Hawaiian organizations of their availability on the web. At that time we will also inform appropriate web indexing services, listservs and online groups. See the attached list. An online survey is ready on the main site page; data on usage will be collected and periodically reported on.

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FINAL EXPENDITURE REPORT

The project expended the entire award amount $3,500 as of approximately June 15th. The UH Account Summary and Transaction Listing dated June 19, 2002 shows that $3,749.63 was charged to the SEED grant account # 1-49882. The portion above the grant amount was covered by Library funds.

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CONTINUATION OF PROJECT

After the SEED funds ran out (during the timesheet pay period 5/10-5/25), we continued paying the Ph.D. student with general Library funding from the DNS department student assistance allotment (the other student graduated and was not eligible to continue student work on campus). This student has continued working during the summer, and an additional graduate student assistant (19 hours/week) started work on the project on June 12th and will work until mid-August. Scanning of the Blount Report has been underway since June - approximately 1000 of the 1,455 pages have been processed, and almost 700 of the pages are available in at least text/HTML format (see http://web.archive.org/web/20071012215425/http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/blount.html [current site is: http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/blount.php]). During July, the anti-annexation petitions were nearly completely scanned by 2 high school students working 2 hours per person per day for 2 weeks (July 15-26). Completion of the scanning (50 pages) and ongoing processing of the petition page images will continue in the next few months pending funding from the library general student budget.

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