First Visit Reflections

It’s been just over two weeks since I’ve returned from the first of two visits to Hawai`i. Looking back I can confidently say it was an incredibly productive, insightful, and enjoyable trip.

I had a full schedule of meetings with people over the course of two and a half weeks and visited three islands in the process. I am very grateful to Heather Giugni for helping with initial introductions and to everyone who I met for being so generous with both their time and knowledge. The list of the people and places I visited represents a small proportion of groups I would like to reach.

Initially, I had planned to meet and talk to people as part of my background research. I wanted to get an understanding of the kinds of audiovisual materials that existed in Hawai`i, an idea of the amounts, if they were being preserved, digitized, and if they were accessible. It became clear that many people were interested in seeing the results of my interviews and wanted to know themselves exactly the status of Hawaii’s moving image heritage. Therefore, I felt that it would be a good idea to expand my initial project and try to conduct a larger more comprehensive survey. This is the subject of my next posting.

While I expected that most people would agree there was a growing need to address preservation of old media formats, I was surprised at the level of excitement and commitment from the people I spoke with. In general, there was a cautious optimism as many voiced a “wait and see approach.” A natural reaction given that the Archive does not yet exist.

Nonetheless, there was universal agreement that the creation of the HKG Archive would be a positive stp forward.