Research Guides: PACS 108: Pacific Worlds: Books (and Dissertations)

Books versus Dissertations

There are some key differences between Books and Dissertations:
"Books" refers to a text that has been reproduced in a mass quantity, and is typically available for purchase in a variety of places. The writing in books tends to be geared toward specific audiences, which range from college professors all the way down to elementary-age students. Some books originally began life as dissertations, but in most cases when a dissertation is published as a book, it is edited in a variety of ways based on its new target audience. Books are usually produced after a certain subject has been researched quite a bit -- the more recent a research topic, the fewer books will be published on it. (So for instance, there will not yet be any books published on COVID-19 in the Pacific; there will be some books published on sea-level rise in the Pacific; and there will be many books published on the revival of traditional navigation techniques in the Pacific.)
This video will give you some tips on how to find online books, using the resources below: VIDEO 2: Finding Books

"Dissertations (and theses)" are written by scholars for scholars, as part of their progress toward either a PhD or a Masters degree. They are not generally produced for large-scale distribution (though they are often revised and published as books). The document produced by a PhD candidate is typically referred to as a Dissertation, while the document produced by a Masters candidate is usually called a Thesis. Dissertations and theses are written for faculty committees that review them to ensure they meet certain academic requirements. They include things like chapters on the methodologies that the researchers used. The writing can be highly academic. Dissertations and theses can often be useful because they include bibliographies of all the works the researchers studied while writing their dissertation -- so even if you don't read the dissertation itself, the bibliography can help you find other resources on a given topic.
This video will help you find dissertations: VIDEO 3: Finding Dissertations (when you can't find books

OneSearch Manoa

OneSearch Manoa
OneSearch is a "discovery tool" that searches for journal articles, books, films and more using a single search. These searches include what is physically in the university library, as well as a huge amount of online material. When looking specifically for books, once you've done a search, use the "Resource Type" filter on the left side of your screen to limit results to "books." You can further limit these results to electronic books by selecting "Available Online" from the options under "Availability" (also in the left-hand column). Note: When using OneSearch, as a first step, be sure to log in (using your UH email log in).

Hathi Trust

HathiTrust
HathiTrust makes the digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries available online, and includes a wealth of Hawai'i- and Pacific-related content. Some material in HathiTrust is in the public domain and can be freely downloaded by any user accessing the site. Other material is limited to UH affiliates (UH students, faculty and staff). To access as a UH affiliate, click on the yellow Log In button to the right of the screen and search the partner institutions for University of Hawaii. You can then log in with your UH username and password.

Finding books in Google Books

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 OneSearch catalog: Search the contents of the books using Google, then search OneSearch for the title. Note: This strategy is meant for accessing books that are physically held in the library; it is less useful during the COVID pandemic, while access to the library is limited.

OneSearch versus HathiTrust

OneSearch and HathiTrust are both places where you can find electronic books; when you use OneSearch, you are also searching for books within HathiTrust, but there are reasons to search in both places:

OneSearch is a "search aggregator," which means that it searches for a wide variety of resources (books, films, journal articles, audio recordings) in a wide variety of places (within Hamilton library, in various electronic databases, on the open internet and elsewhere). So the advantage of OneSearch over HathiTrust is that it searches a much broader "universe" of information than HathiTrust, and will give you access to electronic books that are not available through HathiTrust.

HathiTrust is also a type of search aggregator, but it is more limited than OneSearch, in that it only searches for electronic books (and some journal articles) and only searches for those books that are freely available from a select group of libraries that are members of HathiTrust -- so there are electronic books that you will find in OneSearch that you will not find in HathiTrust, because OneSearch also searches for books that the library pays for, and which aren't feely available through HathiTrust. On the other hand, the advantage to searching directly in HathiTrust instead of in OneSearch is that, for the books that are in HathiTrust, HathiTrust can be used to search through the entire text of all the books it holds for the keywords you are using (OneSearch does not search the full-text of electronic books, only the "metadata" -- the title, the author, the publisher and so forth).

Long story short, both OneSearch and HathiTrust are valuable tools when you're searching for books on a topic, and you will get different results searching within them.

Pacific reference books

For Hawaiian and Pacific research, all of the same tools exist as for any other kind of research. There are region- and subject-specific dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies, histories, newspapers, academic journals and etc. Two very good starting points for general information:

The Pacific Islands: an encyclopedia by Brij V. Lal; Kate Fortune
Call Number: DU17 .P3 2000
ISBN: 082482265x
Publication Date: 2000
A very good source for a wide variety of information on all aspects of life in the Pacific, from pre-contact to present day. See pages 106-188 for an overview of the Pacific diaspora.
The Far East and Australasia by Europa Publications
Call Number: DS 502 .F37
Annual publication with detailed overview information (history, geography, population and economic statistics) for every country in the Pacific, including U.S. affiliated (Hawaiʻi, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa). This can be a useful resource when researching conditions in the country of origin for Pacific Islanders living in Hawaiʻi. Most recent editions are located in the 1st floor reference section and in the Asia reference collection on the 4th floor, as well as in Hawaiian and Pacific Collections reference shelves.