Hawaii Museums: November 2012

Thursday, November 15, 2012

President’s Report – By Jane Hoffman

Incoming HMA board president Jane Hoffman with outgoing

president Stacy Hoshino following the annual meeting.

The venue for our Annual Membership Meeting in mid-May was the Honolulu Museum of Art with about 70 members attending. In addition to the program, members had the opportunity to network with colleagues and partake of refreshments, generously provided by Whole Foods Market Kahala. Honolulu Museum of Art’s Executive Director Stephan Jost delivered a keynote speech which gave us a look behind the scenes, and enlightened us about the history of the museum. He also explained the reasons for the recent name change and outlined exciting plans for the museum’s future. At the meeting we said a fond farewell to outgoing board members, President Stacy Hoshino, Treasurer Celeste Ohta and Director/Oahu Representative Sharon Tasaka. Their many years of service and dedication to HMA are greatly appreciated.

At our recent board meeting, I was encouraged by the board members’ enthusiasm and ideas in planning events for the coming year. On behalf of the board, I encourage participation by all HMA members and welcome your ideas for trainings and seminars.

Following a very exciting and busy year of hosting the Western Museum Association Conference in Honolulu, this year will be a little quieter, but will give us a chance to expand the ways in which we bring new members into our organization.

As I begin my second year on the HMA board, I’m looking forward to getting to know more of my colleagues in the HMA community.

UH Manoa Hamilton Library Recovery Project

In October 2004, heavy rain caused multimillion-dollar flood damage to the Manoa area, including Hamilton Library. The basement area, in particular, was used to store many rare maps that were salvaged in the landmark cleanup effort. Over the next 4 years about 10,000 maps were cleaned and restored; an additional 40,000 were sent for work at a mainland contractor. This collection features some of the restored maps treated by University of Hawai‘i at Manoa preservation staff. The database collection features 573 images of 82 maps including full texts that accompanied five of them. They are restricted as far as reproduction use, but online, provide a fabulous resource for research. Included are the insurance maps for Honolulu and Hawaii’s sugar mills and canneries, Honolulu city maps and maps of the Hawaiian Islands as well as historic maps of Oceania and other parts of the world. More information about the preservation aspects of the map treatments may be found in the document Protocol for Conservation Treatment: Recovery of Hawaiian Maps and Unique Aerial Photographs from University of Hawai’i Manoa Flood Damage at http://digicoll.manoahawaii.edu/savedmaps/index.php

Honolulu Public Art Finder by E. Tory Laitila

In June 2012, the Honolulu Mayor’s Office of Culture and the Arts (MOCA) introduced its first smart phone app. MOCA, in conjunction with the City and County of Honolulu Department of Information Technology (DIT) and Code for America, developed this application. Available for both smart phones and computers, it gives users a real time map showing the placement and descriptions of specific works from Honolulu’s Art in City Buildings collection.

Public art, such as this plaster sculpture of Jose Rizal,

can be found on a new iPhone app developed for Honolulu.

Initially DIT approached MOCA about developing an iPhone app to view Honolulu’s Art in City Buildings collection. The collection at that point was only publicly accessible through the MOCA webpage via PastPerfect online. The app would be a stand alone iPhone application that could access mirrored data from the MOCA PastPerfect museum software database providing direct access to information on the entire collection.

When Code for America joined the City in its goal to develop interactive applications, the design for the Art in City Buildings collection app changed. Instead of merely accessing MOCA’s PastPerfect data, the new app would plot the position of the publicly accessible works of art on a map. Similar to Google Maps, to which MOCA had slowly been adding public art sites, this app would provide a visual guide to the locations of Honolulu’s art works.

The information for the app was provided by exporting data from MOCA’s PastPerfect database. In order to get an accurate location to plot on the map, each object needed exact longitude and latitude coordinates. The entire collection was sorted and a new PastPerfect data field created, “Public Art Access.” Works that were identified with “full” or “limited” public art access had longitude and latitude coordinates acquired and entered in the database.

After this lengthy process, information on “full” and “limited” publicly accessible works of art was exported and utilized by Mick Thompson, a 2012 Code for America fellow, to create the app. Using the colors from the MOCA logo, flag points are shown on a map of the locations of the works, selecting a flag will show the title of the work with a thumbnail image, and if selected again will open a new page that details the title, an image, object name, a description, date, and any donor information. The app can also be used in a list view and will show the user the closest works to their location.

Check out the MOCA Public Art finder at http://art.honolulu.gov.

Hawaiian Language Initiative

Puakea Nogelmeier’s new book tells
the story of making Hawaiian language
newspapers accessible to the general public.

Over 125,000 pages from 100 different Hawaiian-language newspapers were printed from 1834 to 1948. They equal a million or more typescript pages of text - the largest native-language cache in the western world - a repository of knowledge, opinion and historical progress as Hawai‘i moved through kingdom, constitutional monarchy, republic and territory. Only 2% of that repository has been integrated into English to open up this resource for general access.

‘Ike Ku‘oko‘a — Liberating Knowledge is a Hawaiian-newspaper initiative overseen by Puakea Nogelmeier, Director of Awaiaulu, and Kau‘i Sai-Dudoit, Project Director of ‘Ike Ku‘oko‘a, and utilizing an army of volunteers, that is taking the remaining 60,000 digital scans of Hawaiian-language newspapers and transcribing them into searchable typescript. It will open up hundreds of thousands of pages worth of data on history, culture, politics, sciences, world view, and more.

In 8 months since its inception, 15,500 pages of newspapers were transcripted by 3000 ‘Ike Ku‘oko‘a Project volunteers from over 8 countries. For information on the background of the Hawaiian Newspaper Initiatives, the book Mai Pa'a I Ka Leo: Historical Voice in Hawaiian Primary Materials is available from Bishop Museum Press by book, Kindle, and Nook.

For more information http://www.awaiaulu.org/main/ index.php

Database of Historic Homes

Historic Hawai‘i Foundation’s new historic homes online resource provides another way to both to preserve Hawaii’s architectural heritage and help ensure the stories about significant historic properties and cultural resources are shared with the broadest audience by making information available to all who have an interest in Hawaii’s history. The first phase includes about 250 homes enrolled in the Honolulu historic property tax exemption program.

The property list cross references each property by address, historic name, tax map key number, and historic register file number. In addition to providing the searchable list, the website also provides a map of each property’s location, a photograph of the historic home, an abstract of its historic significance, and a link to a digital version of the nomination form. Prior to this, only hard copies of the nomination, held in the State’s files in Kapolei, were available to the public. For more information: http://www.historichawaii.org/Historic_Properties

Two Organizations Celebrate Anniversaries

The venerable lighthouse at Kilauea Point, Kaua‘i will be 100 years old in 2013. The landmark is located on the 32-acre peninsula bluff high above the surging northern swells on northeast Kaua‘i, site of the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The lighthouse and visitor center are undergoing restoration work in preparation of this milestone. The Kilauea Association (KPNHA) works in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife to promote interpretive, educational, and scientific projects that focus on Hawaii’s islands.

The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i (JCCH) kicked off year-long festivities commemorating the 25th anniversary of the center’s incorporation with the unveiling of their newly renovated permanent exhibit “Okage Sama De: I am what I am because of you” on June 3. The exhibit spans the 1800s to today’s multicultural Hawai‘i and chronicles the history and legacy of the Japanese Americans from the first immigrants to present day. New exhibits expand the story to with new artifacts, refurbished wall murals and displays, as well as a new video feature capturing oral testimonies about various topics of the Japanese American experience in Hawai‘i. The renovation is headed up by a team that includes the exhibit’s original designers Jane Komeiji, Tom Klobe, and Momi Cazimero with the help of Grace Murakami, Clinton Uyehara, and Wayne Kawamoto.

Bishop Museum’s Digital Initiatives

Bishop Museum Press enters the digital realm with the release of six of its most historically important and popular publications as e-books. Titles available for the Kindle, iPad, and Nook e-readers include Folktales of Hawai‘i, collected and translated by Mary Kawena Pukui with Laura Green; Ka Po‘e Kahiko: The People of Old, Works of the People of Old, and Tales and Traditions of the People of Old by Samuel Kamakau; Arts and Crafts of Hawai‘i by Peter Buck; and A Legendary Tradition of Kamapua‘a, the Hawaiian Pig-God by Lilikala Kame‘eleihiwa. An additional nine titles will become available soon. E-books provide another means for extending our reach, offering added convenience, and engaging new readers in the rich legacy of storytelling and sharing knowledge that remains at the heart of the Museum’s mission.

Bishop Museum’s Government & Governance Digital Initiative, supported by the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities, provides digital access to rare and unique research materials written or collected by those actively engaged in government service during Hawaii’s monarchial period. These documents, amassed from both Hawaiian and English language sources, present and represent diverse perspectives of 19th century Hawai‘i to provide an understanding of the social history, local concerns, and international political machinations a century ago.

HMA Annual Meeting Networking

The HMA Annual Meeting on May 14 provided fellowship as well as an educational opportunity for the organization’s diverse membership. In photos; top - Jane Hoffman, Rebeccah Tresser and Bronwen Solyom; bottom, left - Christy Takamune and Tory Laitila; bottom, right - Stacy Hoshino and Kelly Ota.

Practical Stewardship of Collections Conference

Save the date: Saturday, February 16, 2013 – Practical Stewardship of Collections Conference organized by the Association of Hawai‘i Archivists (AHA)

WHO: Open to members of AHA, Hawai‘i Museums Association (HMA) and Hawai‘i Library Association (HLA)

WHEN: Saturday, February 16, 2013 (President’s Day Weekend) 8:00 AM – 3:00 P.M.

(AHA Annual Business Meeting to follow)

WHERE: Queen Kapi‘olani Hotel, Waikiki – across from the zoo

WHAT: Presentations and demonstrations that will assist you with the practical daily stewardship of your collections. The program is being directly informed by the results of the 2010 HMA Connecting to Collections Survey, which was funded by a grant from the

Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

More details to come and please plan to join us!

The AHA Conference Planning Committee includes: Dawn Sueoka, Director; Georgina Tom, Director; and Mary Louise Haraguchi, Director.

For more information - http://hawaiiarchivists.org/