Research Guides: PACS303: Arts, Ritual and Performance: Research Strategies (Library Resources)

Subject Headings

By Geography

If searching for material on a particular place, use the following subject headings and the name of the country/territory within the UHM OneSearch Advanced search. Select "Subject" from the "Any field" drop down and input Art Vanuatu for books about art created in Vanuatu or by Ni Vanuatu (the indigenous people of Vanuatu). For books that cover broader areas, use either one of the below with Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, Pacific or Oceania.

Art
Dance
Music
Comics

Also, if you want to do a looser search but ensure the items have illustrations, in the UHM OneSearch Advanced search, on the next row include an "Any field" search with the word (without the quotes) "illustrations."

By and About an Artist

If your looking for things that have been written by a particular artist, use UHM OneSearch Advanced search, and select "Author" from the "Any field" drop down and input the Author (Last Name First).

For things written about an artist, use UHM OneSearch Advanced search, and select "Subject" from the "Any field" drop down and input the Author (Last Name First).

So in other words, if you search for Pule, John in the Author (Last Name First) search, you will find books by the Niuean artist, novelist and poet John Pule. If you search for Pule, John in the Subject search, you will find books about him.

Note: These "by" and "about" searches will generally only work for well-known artists, who have either themselves written books or had books written about them. For lesser know artists, see the "Google Books" search description, as well as how to search for journal articles (most artists will be written about in magazines and journals before they will make it into books).

Places to look, tools to use

UHM OneSearch

Searches the UH Library holdings, the Hawaii Pacific Journal Index, ScholarSpace and eVols, and a huge index of academic journals on most topics. Also includes conference papers, maps, government documents, music scores, DVDs, archives & manuscripts, and more. OneSearch does not find everything that the library has access to, but it is a useful starting point for looking for a wide variety of material.

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.

ArchivesSpace

This is the archives management system used by UHM Library. Full finding aids are available from this system.

A large portion of the photographic images from these collections have been digitized and are available from the UHM Library Digital Image Collections.

The Pacific Ephemera Collection (MANUSCRIPT P00066) is described here in ArchivesSpace. It is organized geographically and then by topic.

ARTstor
To use the digital library of ARTstor, click "Enter Here" in the box that says "ARTstor Digital Library" in the upper right corner. Register or log in with your free ARTstor account (separate from the UH account) to use full functionality. ARTstor is a digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.
Artstor is now available via JSTOR. Click here to access the old Artstor platform through Aug. 1, 2024.

Micronesian Seminar online photo collections
Thirty separate photo collections document numerous aspects (and eras) of life throughout Micronesia.
UCSD Melanesian Archive digital collections
Nearly 6,500 images. The majority are from the Solomon Islands, but collection also includes images from throughout the Pacific, including the Cook Islands, Fiji, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu. Photos date from the 1930s through 1990s.
UHM Library Digital Image Collections
Images that have been digitized by the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library.
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The majority of the images in these collections are either in the public domain or the rights are owned by UH-Manoa Library and can therefore be used for your iBooks. In cases where other permissions might be needed, it is noted in the collection descriptions.

Films on Demand Films on Demand provides streaming access to educational videos in the humanities, social and natural sciences, business and health. Content on contemporary Pacific artists is sparse, but it does include interviews with Shigeyuki Kihara and Kathy Jetnil Kijiner, among others. (You can search for film segments by artists' names.)

Pacific Streaming Videos Videos from UHM Library's collection, which have been digitized and are available for viewing on your computer (requires internet connect and valid UH-Mānoa ID/password). See especially the tab for Art, Music and Dance.
Pasifika Poetry Includes both audio and video of poets from throughout Oceania.

NZ On screen Explore an excellent collection of documentaries, TV shows, and feature films from New Zealand. Includes several films about Pacific art and music.

Asia Pacific Films AsiaPacificFilms.com streams culturally and historically significant films from Asia and the Pacific. Titles include: The Land Has Eyes, a feature film that includes one version of the Rotuman origin story.

Ethnographic Video Online: Volume III, Indigenous Voices
Ethnographic Video Online is a comprehensive online resource for the study of human culture, behavior and society around the world. The collections contain over 1,300 hours of streaming video, including ethnographic films, documentaries, select feature films, and previously unpublished fieldwork. It's also a resource for a study of the discipline itself: By placing examples of traditional ethnographic methodologies alongside indigenous-made films representing previously overlooked perspectives, scholars, teachers and students of anthropology can gain a sense of the discipline's history and of its future direction.