Exploring Theme Pages

The last several months have been a whirlwind for us all. While the world learns to deal with the concept of “social distancing” we hope that everyone is able to find some bright spots in their abundance of “me time.” The ‘Ulu’ulu staff is largely working from home, at the moment, but there are still parts of our collection that you can access without contacting us directly. For example, if you haven’t gotten a chance to familiarize yourself with our website, please do! The clip collection, in particular, is a feature on our website that is meant to assist anyone interested in searching our collection for research or just for fun. It’s perfect for when you have some extra time on your hands.

Anyone can search the clip collection using the search bar that should be at the top of every page on our website. The clip collection is always growing and we also create themes to pull some of them together by topic. Some topics are entertaining and some are more solemn, but we try to encompass the breadth of our collection in these themes. Past themes have included The Merrie Monarch Festival, Wai (water rights), politicians, women’s history month, paniolo and so much more. We have continued creating theme pages and are aiming to release new ones regularly as more items from our collections are digitized.

From our home page uluulu.hawaii.edu you can follow the navigation link at the top right hand corner of the page that says “Explore,” and this will take you to the complete collection of Theme Pages. You can browse through all of them and even discover a jumping off point for learning more. The sampling of clips in our themes are not exhaustive, but we hope they are an enlightening introduction to the many facets of Hawai‘i that are preserved in our archive. Below, are the two most recent themes focusing on the Performing Arts in Hawai‘i and Food!

The performing arts have always been a big part of the cultures of Hawai‘i. From Hula to comedy, everything we do is unique or has a unique spin on it. We thought this would be a terrific opportunity to highlight ‘Ulu’ulu’s growing collection of performing arts materials.

We added a corresponding web theme to share some of the many clips that are available on our website to view. This collection focuses on the performing arts legacy that Hawai‘i and its people have nurtured for generations. Because of its multitude of cultures, Hawai‘i has regularly churned out artists and performances that are distinctly its own. Included here are a combination of clips depicting dance, stage drama, comedy and musical performances.

We updated an older theme on food to include some of our more recently generated clips, as food is one of the most important facets of any group of people. We need it to survive, but we also consume and share certain foods as ways to celebrate life events, comfort ourselves and demonstrate pride in our heritage. Here is our updated, theme page with clips from our numerous collections showing some of the many aspects of food in Hawai’i, from gathering to production to enjoyment.

The clips that we post are only about 10% of the full-length footage. So, if you find yourself wanting to know just how the rest of an interview or segment went in one of the clips, there is the “Ask an Archivist” button the bottom of every page on our website. If you click on that button, you can fill out the form and let us know which clip you want to see more of. Try to give as much information as possible; the title and the title number are particularly helpful. From there, we’ll be able to assist you in getting the full-length footage streamed directly to you.

We hope that this additional knowledge helps boost understanding about the archive and what we do.

Stay safe and healthy, everyone!