Hamilton Library (Hawaii)


The Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa is the largest research library in the state of Hawaii. The Library serves as a key resource for the flagship Manoa campus as well as the other University of Hawaii system campuses.
It was designed by George Hogan who designed numerous houses on the island including Plantation Estate which was used by Barack Obama as his Winter White House.

Description

Hamilton Library is located at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, at 2550 McCarthy Mall. It is composed of a circulating research library combined with a non-lending research library system.
As of June 2013, the Library has a full-time equivalent of 46 library faculty and 31 other professional staff, 58 support staff, and 46 student assistants. The collections contain 3,102,696 volumes, 2,353,143 microform units, of manuscripts and archives, 112,000 audiovisual items, 200,000 maps and 100,000 aerial photographs, over 150,000 digital maps and aerials and approximately 70,751 current serial/journal titles received in paper, microform and/or electronic format. Total expenditures for monographic and serial materials in all formats and personnel were $14,426,748 in 2013. The Library operates by using the Ex Libris ALMA library services platform and PRIMO Discovery system. Among the 115 North American university research library members of ARL, UH Manoa Library is ranked 79th in strength based on factors such as collection size, current serial subscriptions, staffing, and budget. UH Manoa Hamilton Library is ranked 77th in the nations largest libraries by the American Library Association.
Collections are housed in two on-campus buildings: Hamilton Library and Sinclair Library. Hamilton Library, with a total of of space, houses the research collections in the humanities, social sciences, science, and technology, the area focus collections for Asia, Hawaii, and the Pacific; archives, manuscripts, and other special collections. The Hamilton Library is home to the music collection, course reserve reading service, Wong Audiovisual Center, and older, bound journals. Hamilton contains a student computer lab and provide reference and other services.
During 2013-14, the library faculty and staff assisted in 21,054 reference transactions, 207,346 circulation transactions including reserves, and 25,424 interlibrary loan transactions. Through their instructional activities, the Library faculty support the Mānoa General Education and other campus requirements for student information literacy. During 2013/14, the Library faculty taught 528 undergraduate and graduate instructional sessions involving 7,382 students. In addition, Library faculty taught courses in the Library and Information Science Program of the Information and Computer Science Department.

Area Collections

Asia

The Asia Collection is the most significant collection of Asian materials in the State of Hawaii. It dates from 1920, when the University of Hawaii Board of Regents established the Japanese Department. The Oriental Institute was established in 1930 to support study of China, India and Japan. The East-West Center acquired the vernacular language (CJK( materials of the Oriental Library in 1962. The Research Libraries of the EWC expanded the scope of Asia regional studies to include Korea and all countries in South and Southeast Asia. In 1970, the Asia Collection was transferred from the EWC back to the University of Hawaii Library. The collection has specialist librarian faculty for the following areas:

China

Materials related to China are integrated into the East and Asia Collection of Hamilton Library.

Japan

Materials related to Japan are integrated into the East and Asia Collection of Hamilton Library. The Japan Collection also holds a number of unique/rare collections housed in the Asia Special Collections room.

Korea

Materials related to Korean studies are located in the East and Asia Collection of Hamilton Library.

Okinawa

Materials are currently part of the Japan area studies. The Hawaii State Legislature established the Center for Okinawan Studies effective fiscal year 2008. House Bill no. 1025 of the 2013 Hawaii State Legislature Relating to the Center for Okinawan Studies provided funding for a full-time Okinawan studies librarian position at the University of Hawaii at Manoa library.

Philippines

The Philippine Collection at the University of Hawai'i is one of the largest Philippine collections in the United States. It has research and rare materials in various formats, integrated into the Asia Collection.

South Asia

The South Asia collection in Hamilton Library acquires materials published in South Asia through a cooperative Library of Congress acquisition program. Additional materials published outside of South Asia are also purchased. For this collection, the South Asia region includes Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Southeast Asia

Materials related to Southeast Asia are integrated into the Asia Collection of Hamilton Library. The regions covered in the collection include: Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Lestem Vietnam

Hawaii

The Hawaiian Collection at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Library is a comprehensive collection of retrospective and current materials pertaining to Hawai'i. Material pertaining to all aspects of Hawaii and at all levels of writing are collected in print and non-print formats. It is housed on the fifth floor of Hamilton Library in the combined Hawaiian/Pacific Collection. Audiovisual materials related to Hawai'i are housed in the Wong Audiovisual Center at Sinclair Library.

Pacific

The Pacific Collection is internationally recognized for the excellence of its holdings and has materials relating to the island regions of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. It is housed on the fifth floor of Hamilton Library in the combined Hawaiian/Pacific Collection. Audiovisual materials related to the Pacific are housed in the Wong Audiovisual Center at Sinclair Library.

Special Collections

Hamilton Library has several special collections, many are combined in the Archives & Manuscripts Department, located on the 5th floor of the Hamilton Library Addition. The Archives & Manuscript unit also includes the Hawaii War Records Depository and the Japanese American Veterans Collection. The Jean Charlot Collection is a standalone unit located across the hall from the Hawaiian/Pacific Collection. Other rare materials are located in various parts of the Library and from 2009-early 2015 were accessed via a quasi-unit known as Special Research Collections .

Manuscripts

The Manuscript Collections document the people, history, culture, and politics of Hawaii. It includes:

  • Ronald Stone Anderson Papers
  • Marjorie Grant Whiting Papers
  • Arthur Goodfriend Papers
  • Robert Baker Aitken Papers
  • Institute of Pacific Relations Records
  • Pacific & Asian Affairs Council Records
  • Pan Pacific Union Records
  • World War II Manuscript Collections
  • Hawaii Congressional Papers Collection
  • Democratic Party Records

University Archives

This collection is a repository for official and unofficial records of the history of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, as well as selected state and local history materials pertaining to the university. It includes material on labor relations and ethnic relations in Hawaii.

Memberships

The UH Manoa Library maintains memberships in academic and professional consortia and organizations including:

Institutional Repository and Digital Research Collections

The University of Hawai'i is a participant in the Open access community. In December 2010 the faculty of the University of Hawaii at Manoa committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible by adopting an Open Access Policy.

ScholarSpace

ScholarSpace is an institutional repository for the digital scholarly output for the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa faculty, researchers and students. Contributors maintain copyright to their submissions and can control access to their collections. The digital repository serves to capture, index, store, makes searchable, disseminate, and preserve digital materials which include scholarly communications, theses and dissertations, technical reports, teaching materials, images, multimedia clips, interactive teaching programs, data sets, and databases.

System & Organization

ScholarSpace uses the open-source software, DSpace, that provides a permanent and stable storage. DSpace was developed by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Company. The database is maintained and coordinated by Desktop Network Services of the UHM Library. The project focuses on developing a system to support the storage and use of digital materials for undergraduate, graduate, and faculty learning and other purposes.
ScholarSpace is organized primarily into Communities, Sub-communities, and Collections. Communities are groups that present content to the database and may include departments, labs, research centers, schools, or another unit within an institution. Communities may be further separated into Sub-communities. Collections are housed within these Communities and/or Sub-communities and contain the actual content which includes individual audio, visual, and textual files, as well as web pages, videos, computer programs.

eVols

eVols is a digital repository for Hamilton Library research and rare materials which are digitally reformatted or scanned for digital access. It includes material which the library digitizes as part of grant projects and digital library program initiatives, and provides access via a permanent web location. The library has received funding for digital conversion from the Greater Western Library Alliance, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of Congress, the Oakland Museum of California, the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance and University of the Ryukyu. stores digitized rare books, archived newspapers, full-text journals, photographs, video, and sound files.

Digital Image Collections

Hamilton Library offers almost 40 showcasing important, previously hidden, visual and archival material from the Asia, Hawaii, Pacific and Rare collections.

Directors