University of Hawaii at Manoa Library

Student Equity, Excellence, and Diversity Grant Request 2002
The Annexation Of Hawaii:
A Collection Of Documents On The World Wide Web

Introduction
Goals and Objectives
Methods and Budget
Evaluation
Conclusion
Final Report


Questions and comments: speccoll@hawaii.edu


INTRODUCTION TO PROJECT

In 2001, the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library was awarded a $3,500 grant from the President's Diversity and Equity Initiative. We proposed to digitize primary documents supporting work in two significant areas of inquiry in Hawaiian studies, the examination of the annexation of Hawai'i by the United States, and the question of the role of the United States in the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. We were awarded half of the sum that we requested. We are now requesting funding to complete the website, and to additionally prepare a portion of the website for release in compact disk format.

We originally proposed to digitize the following materials: the reports popularly known as the "Blount Report" of 1894, and the "Morgan Report" of 1893-1894, the Hawaiian anti-annexation petitions of 1897, a selection of documents in both Hawaiian and English protesting annexation (including those written by Queen Lili'uokalani), and the Congressional debates on the Organic Act of Hawai'i, 1899-1900. While we were granted just half the amount of funds that we requested last year, we were able to complete 65% of the project because of an additional 345 hours donated by 5 people involved in the project in various ways.

We were pleased to have been able to involve two young volunteers in the project, as part of a Library-wide summer project working with local high school students. We also worked with the Bishop Museum Archives, who generously granted us an institutional loan of their copy of the anti-annexation petitions, which is the best and cleanest copy of the petitions available outside of the U.S. National Archives. This loan allowed us to create the clearest digitized version of the petitions we could have hoped for.

The Annexation website is in progress at: http://web.archive.org/web/20071109052454/http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/annexation.html. Selected web pages have been printed out and are attached for review. [current site is: http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/annexation.php] A new addition to the project is the plan to present portions of the website in compact disk format. Specifically, we propose to transfer the anti-annexation petitions of 1897 to compact disk. Since initiating this project in 2001, we have been contacted by two community groups who were also planning on digitizing the petitions. Since being assured that the project's results would be available to the public and that we would be using the Bishop Museum Archives copy of the petitions, both groups have decided to halt their projects and rely upon our website.

Recognizing the continuing demand for access to these documents, and recognizing that not all members of the larger community have high-speed access to the internet, we propose to make the petitions available on compact disk. We will use DEI grant funds to complete the website, and if any funds remain, we will begin designing the interface and print support materials for the compact disk. We will also be pursuing outside funding to complete the compact disk project and to make the disk available at either no cost or very low cost.

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GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The goal of this project is to contribute to the Diversity and Equity Initiative of the University of Hawai'i by addressing the need for greater accessibility to information, by encouraging dialog between individuals and groups, and by providing increased opportunity for scholarship and research conducted at the University and elsewhere. This project will contribute to the recovery of a fuller Hawaiian history, in support of studies that provide alternatives to the dominant narratives used in the teaching of Hawaiian and U.S. history. These efforts are of great importance to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, a critical issue for all of the peoples of Hawai'i. For students at the University of Hawai'i the discussion is both an academic one, debated in the classroom, and a personal question, discussed in the broader community, whether one is of Hawaiian descent or not. Within this context, this project will address the diversity dimensions of national origin and race.

The project's objectives are to digitize reports and debates from the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom and the annexation of Hawai'i, and to provide electronic access to these materials beyond the walls of the University, via the internet and via the medium of compact disk.

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METHODS OF PROJECT AND PROJECTED BUDGET

Qualifications of principal investigator
Martha Chantiny, principal investigator of this project, is a senior systems librarian and digital projects coordinator at Hamilton Library. She has coordinated two federally funded digital projects, two UH funded projects, and one project funded by the Hawai'i Committee for the Humanities. She is the head of the Library's Desktop Network Support Department. Associate investigators are Dore Minatodani, Hawai'i specialist librarian at Hamilton Library's Hawaiian Collection, and Dr. Noenoe Silva, researcher in Hawaiian history using Hawaiian language sources and assistant professor at UHM's Political Science Department.

Equipment and Software
Computer equipment for scanning and digitizing is presently available in Hamilton Library. OCR software "Finereader" to convert the image files into text files is also available in the Library. Server space will be provided by the Library.

Personnel
The project will rehire the students who had been working on last year's grant funds to scan and optically enhance images, operate OCR software, load files onto web, and link web page to appropriate library and Hawaiian resources on the Web.

Items to Digitize
The work left to complete on the individual documents is shown below.

Item--------------------------To Scan -------To quality/accuracy check
Blount Report: ---------------- 0 pages ----- 900 pages
Morgan Report ---------------- 773 pages ---- 773 pages
Anti-annexation petitions:  --- 0 pages ----- 660 pages
Debates on organic act: ------- 0 pages ----- 322 pages
TOTAL ---------------------- 773 pages ---- 2,655 pages

Total amount requested
The number of hours calculated reflect our updated understanding of the amount of time needed for this project, based on the work done under the first grant project during 2001-02.

To scan: 773 pages @ 2/hour = 385 hours
To Q/A: 2,655 pages @ 10/hour = 265 hours
Total: 650 hours @ $10/hour = $6,500.00

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EVALUATION

Evaluation will include collecting and analyzing data about and from users of the digital resources by means of a web-based survey form. In addition, ongoing evaluation of the progress toward completion of the tasks will be conducted.

Appropriate instructional faculty, libraries, and educational and Hawaiian organizations will be notified of the availability of the documents on the web and on compact disk. Appropriate web indexing services, listservs and online groups will be notified. Note that upon completion of the 2001-02 President's Diversity and Equity grant project, we were not able to notify the public of the availability of the website, because the project was not completed and the documents were incomplete.

CONCLUSION

This collection of primary documents will create a core of research materials for the exploration of annexation issues. The digitized resources will become part of the UHM Library's "Digital Archive Collections" website (http://library.manoa.hawaii.edu/research/digicoll.php), and help to build a digital library of Hawaiian and Pacific resources. In this way the project will provide access to important source materials for use on local, national, and international levels and participate in the University's initiative to spread diversity on a global scale.

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