Hawaii's voyaging history digitally documented in new website

Hookele.org, a six-year archival project, is launched

Honolulu Community College
Contact:
Billie K T Lueder, (808) 845-9187
Communications & External Affairs, Chancellor's Office, Honolulu Community College
Posted: Feb 6, 2012

Honolulu's Marine Education Training Center
Honolulu's Marine Education Training Center
Honolulu Community College, along with project partners the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS), University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, and Ulukau, the Hawaiian Digital Library, will unveil the digital archives of the PVS available at Hookele.org.
 
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Honolulu Community College Marine Education Training Center
10 Sand Island Parkway
 
"I am very pleased to have partnered with the University of Hawai‘i System to preserve our voyaging history in perpetuity for future generations. With the release of this digital archive on the web we'll be able to pass on our knowledge of voyaging to future generations and continue to raise subsequent generations of Hawaiian voyagers,” explains PVS Executive Director Nainoa Thompson.
 
The event on Feb. 8 will serve as a celebration commemorating the completion of the six-year project, and to thank individuals who dedicated their lives to the project as well as the many sponsors and donors who contributed to the archive.
 
The purpose of the archive is to preserve and perpetuate navigation materials of the Polynesian Voyaging Society for future generations, and to make them widely available to the scholarly and teaching communities for purposes of curriculum development while also reaching the wider Hawaiian and general communities at large. In January 2006, Thompson pitched the archive project idea at a joint meeting with then Honolulu CC Chancellor Ramsey Pedersen to use the college’s Title III funds to support the endeavor, which began in October 2006.
 
Given the scope and nature of the archive project, a partnership with Ulukau, the Hawaiian Digital Library, was sought out. Popular and widely known in the Hawaiian scholarly community, Ulukau, which launched in 2003, is the pre-eminent digital archive of Hawaiian materials on the Internet having digitized and made available online the Hawaiian dictionary, Hawaiian language newspapers and rare Hawaiian language books. Ulukau is a joint venture between Hale Kuamo‘o at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo and Alu Like's Native Hawaiian Library.
 
65,000 documents in total were digitized in the summer of 2007. After securing copyright permissions and other clearances to post the materials, 40,000 of the original 65,000 were cleared and posted online. The collection was then expanded to include additional materials from members of the voyaging community.
 
Thompson shares, “Considering that at one time this knowledge was nearly lost forever, my heart is at peace knowing that the creation and release of this resource will forever preserve this priceless treasure of our cultural heritage.”
 
One of the future goals with the completion of the archives is to develop a voyaging curriculum available at Honolulu Community College.