Research Guides: Maori Literature and Film: Research Strategies

Useful Subject Headings

Use these subject headings to narrow your search in OneSearch, via an "Advanced Search" selecting subject from the dropdown menu.

Maori (New Zealand People) in literature

Maori (New Zealand People) in film

Maori literature

Maori (New Zealand people) Ethnic Identity

New Zealand literature Maori authors

New Zealand literature 20th century

English literature Maori authors

For works about a specific author, use "Subject Browse" by author's last name:

Grace, Patricia

Ihimaera, Witi

and etc.

You can also search more broadly for works from (and about) the Pacific region:

Islands of the Pacific in literature

Oceania in literature

Pacific Island literature History and criticism

For a more general list of useful Pacific-related subject headings, click here:

Useful subject headings for browsing Voyager catalog by Karen Peacock
Publication Date: 2000
A selective list of heavily used Pacific subject headings.

Databases, Indexes & Online Document Collections

Hawaii Pacific Journal Index
Citation index to nearly 140 journals published in or about Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Covers all subject areas and includes both peer-reviewed academic journals and "popular press" publications, most of which are not indexed anywhere else. Coverage dates back to the 1890s; all titles indexed are held in the print collections of Hamilton Library's Hawaiian and Pacific Collections. A listing of titles indexed in HPJI is available.
JSTOR
The Library has purchased access to the JSTOR Arts & Sciences I-XV collections, Life Sciences collection, and Business IV. These collections provide full-text journal backfiles in various disciplines. Selected journals in the following subject areas are available: African-American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance History, Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Sociology and Statistics.
MLA (Modern Language Association) International Bibliography
NOTE: MLA International Bibliography is only available via EBSCOhost beginning Jan. 1, 2019.
Subject index for books and articles published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. It is produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), an organization dedicated to the study and teaching of language and literature. The electronic version of the Bibliography dates back to 1963 and contains over 1.6 million citations from more than 4,400 periodicals (including peer-reviewed e-journals) and 1,000 book publishers.
It is compiled by the staff of the MLA Department of Bibliographic Information Services with the cooperation of more than 100 contributing bibliographers in the United States and abroad. Such international coverage is represented by literature from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America, and while the majority of records are from English-language publications, at least sixty other languages are represented including French, Spanish, German, Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Swedish. Includes access to MLA Directory of Periodicals.
Project Muse
Access to selected full text of approximately 250 scholarly journals published by university presses. The publishers involved are Johns Hopkins University Press, Carnegie Mellon University Press, Duke University Press, Indiana University Press, MIT Press, Oxford University Press, Pennsylvania State University Press, University of Hawaii Press, University of Texas Press, and the University of Wisconsin Press. Most journals included are in arts and humanities.
WorldCat (via OCLC FirstSearch)
OCLC catalog of books, web resources, and other material worldwide. NOTE: Only 4 users allowed at one time. If you cannot login, try again later.
NOTE: WorldCat via OCLC FirstSearch will soon become WorldCat Discovery. Click here to try WorldCat Discovery now.

Basic Research Checklist

Generally speaking, all Hawaiʻi- and Pacific-related library research begins with two major steps: 1) Check the Library's holdings for major works (book-length works, including dissertations and theses; "grey literature" (things like academic papers that may not have been published); and films); 2) check databases and other resources for published journal articles. These searches will usually require you to use a mix of "controlled vocabulary" (more on this below) and keyword searches -- it's a good idea to think about key words and topics before you start searching.

1. Voyager vs. OneSearch

Voyager is the Library's online catalog; it holds the record for every item (books, journals, newspapers, microfilms, videos, audio recordings) in every library in the UH system, from Hilo to Kauaʻi. Generally speaking, Voyager allows you to search for materials by title, author, publisher and subject. It does NOT generally allow you to search for the titles of articles within journals or the titles / authors of chapters within books (there are other strategies for these kinds of searches ... see below). There are occasional exceptions to this rule -- some book contents are listed in Voyager records; some journal articles have been cataloged separately in Voyager by title -- but generally speaking when you are searching in Voyager, you are searching for major works (full length books, films and so forth) either by an author or about an author or subject. If you are looking for journal articles or lesser known works, you'll need to use other databases, including OneSearch.
OneSearch is a search engine that allows you to search the library's online catalog as well as numerous databases and web-based resources. While OneSearch includes Voyager in its searches, it is sometimes better to search Voyager separately to ascertain what the major works are on a subject, and then move on to searching OneSearch, which allows you to limit your searches based on a variety of filters (this can be useful if you are looking for scholarly (also called "peer-reviewed") articles, and/or material that is available electronically).
Some search tips:
Before you start searching either Voyager or OneSearch, it's a good idea to log into system, which you can do by clicking on the "Login to your account" link in the upper right hand of the Voyager search screen or the "Sign In" link in the upper right hand of the OneSearch screen. This will not only save you a step when you begin requesting books, but also allows you to save your search results for future reference (very important when it comes time to cite your references in a paper.
The simplest way to begin searching is via a keyword search. In the "Basic" mode, simply type some words that you think might describe your needs (for instance, Maori literature or Maori representation) and hit search. This will give you a broad sampling of materials, some of which should be related to your topic. When you find something that is of interest, look at the "Subjects" field -- you can click on these links to find other materials that are on the same topic.

Subject searching is a more focused means of navigating in Voyager. Because it is a "controlled vocabulary" it is also less forgiving than keyword searching. If you already know your subject headings, use them in the Basic Search mode, as a "Subject Browse" search. (See the box at left for a list of useful subject headings dealing with Maori literature and film, as well as Maori representations in literature and film). If you are unsure of the exact subject heading, click on the "subject" tab that shows at top of the search window -- this is a "subject keyword" search, and will bring up all titles with the subject headings that contain the keywords you use. (Note that a basic keyword search will also search all subject headings; by using a subject keyword search you are essentially narrowing down the basic keyword search by limiting it strictly to the subject headings field.)

TIP: When searching for books BY a specific author, use the "Author (Last Name First)" search in Basic mode; when looking for books ABOUT an author, use the Subject Browse search in Basic mode (use last name first in this search as well).

2. Hawaii-Pacific Journal Index (HPJI)

*Note: The Hawaii-Pacific Journal Index is also searched as part of the standard OneSearch package -- below instructions are useful if you want to search the database separately.

As mentioned above, Voyager searches for the titles of journals, but it does not generally search for titles of articles within journals. Hawaii-Pacific Journal Index is one way to "look inside" journals. It is not a full-text database, but it does allows you to search the contents of more than 130 scholarly journals and "popular press" magazines published in or about Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Most of these are not indexed anywhere else in the world. All of the searching in HPJI is by keyword, and covers the article title, journal title, author, journal date, and an abstract/summary of each article.

The three most useful searches in HPJI are Keyword Anywhere, Author Name and Journal Name. In most cases, it is best to use the "advanced search" mode, rather than the "basic search," which is less flexible.
With a few exceptions, most of the magazines and journals indexed in the HJPI are only available in print; all are held by the Hawaiʻi and Pacific Collections in UHM library. Once you find an article in HPJI, look at the holdings information -- if there is an electronic version available (such as for Contemporary Pacific or the Journal of the Polynesian Society) a link should appear in the HPJI record. Otherwise, you will need to go back into the Voyager database, search for the journal title in basic search mode, and then use "Get This Item" to request the specific journal the article appears in.
When working in HPJI, it's a good idea to have two windows open so that you can run HPJI and Voyager simultaneously; once you've found something in HPJI, you can then jump to Voyager to request the journal. Remember to save the publishing information (article title, journal title, issue date, page numbers) for all items you request: A year's worth of journals are often bound together; if you don't have this information with you when you come to look at the journal, you will waste a lot of time flipping through hundreds of pages looking for your article.

3. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another useful means of searching inside scholarly journals, and you will often find material here that is not indexed in HPJI (because Hawaiʻi and Pacific scholars will sometimes publish articles in journals that are not specifically about Hawaii or the Pacific).Be cautioned however that the opposite is also true: Many of the journals indexed in HPJI have not been scanned by Google -- don't skip HPJI thinking that Google Scholar will find everything, or you will miss some important resources.

Although you can reach Google Scholar on the open internet, it is best to log in through the library's electronic resources portal (use the link above) -- this is because the library's version of Google Scholar automatically recognizes articles that the library has paid for through its database subscriptions, and so you can immediately get the articles for free in full text. If you were to find the same articles using the open Internet version, you would be required to pay for access to the articles.

If you find an article in Google Scholar that the library doesn't subscribe to electronically, be sure to search in the Voyager catalog to see if we subscribe to the print version.

4. Google Books

Google Books can at times be a useful tool for searching within the contents of books: It searches the full text of books that have been scanned by Google. If a book is out of copyright or if Google has made arrangements with a copyrighted book's publisher, you will often be able to look at full-text on screen. In other cases, you will be able to see a small "snippet" of the text.

When full text is not available online (or even if it is, but you prefer to read the printed version), keep in mind that virtually all of the books you find on Google Books will be available in print in the UH library. So you can also use Google Books as a supplement to our Voyager catalog: Search the contents of the books using Google, then search Voyager for the title.