Hawaiian Language Newspaper Project Receives OHA Grant
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs has awarded Bishop Museum a grant for $80,000 to benefit the Ho‘olaupa‘i: Hawaiian Newspaper Resource Project, an innovative program that makes pages from early Hawaiian language newspapers available on the Internet.
Through its program of making Hawaiian language texts available, Ho‘olaupa‘i makes strides towards an important goal supported by OHA - the increase of Hawaiian literacy. The project focuses on use of the internet, as well as digital and OCR (optical character recognition) technology to present pages of Hawaiian newspapers that can be searched by key words and phrases. The result is an offering of thousands of pages of Hawaiian text that is readily used by researchers, instructors and students for educational or other purposes. The work of Ho‘olaupa‘i is available and easily accessible at www.nupepa.org.
During the 1800 and early 1900s, native Hawaiians wrote and published extensively in their own language though a myriad of Hawaiian newspapers. Traditional, cultural, historical and political wisdom is contained within existing collections of these publications. The newspapers represent the largest collection of native language writings of any Pacific peoples and were the product of a fully literate population, created by and for them.
Access has been extremely limited because of the condition of the originals that are deteriorating despite costly preservation techniques. Making the information available on the internet reduces the need for manual search which helps preservation efforts by reducing use of the originals in the archival collections.
OCR renders the Hawaiian language newspaper archive directly accessible by word search. Although the information is all in Hawaiian, OCR access can locate key content through Hawaiian word and phrase searching. This process facilitates further research and understanding of Hawaiian discussion on key topics during the 19 th and early 20 th centuries.
Bishop Museum recently presented a performance exhibition of Hawaiian chant culled from early Hawaiian newspapers. Thousands of oli were printed in these newspapers between 1834 and 1948, and until now, these oli were largely lost and unavailable to contemporary Hawaiians. The efforts of the Ho‘olaupa‘i project team led to the compilation of 646 oli for selection by the chanters who performed at Pa Ka Leo. Many of the oli had not been performed for more that a century. The event was a stunning success as it brought verses and expressions of emotion from a much earlier time to life with great impact.
According to ProjectManager Kau‘ i Sai-Dudoit, “O ke au i hala ka lamakū o ke ala i ke kukupu. The past is the beacon that will guide us into the future. With this gift from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the Ho‘olaupa‘i: Hawaiian Newspaper Resource Project will continue to provide access that renews interest in the poetic language, history and cultural practices of our kūpuna while ensuring continuity of cultural knowledge.”
For more information about Ho‘olaupa‘i, contact Kau‘ i Sai-Dudoit at ksaidudoit@bishopmuseum.org, or Bishop Museum at 808.848.4126, or visit www.bishopmuseum.org.
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