 Hello my kakou and welcome to this month's episode of Roots Hawaii. Today's episode is entitled Discovering and Connecting at the Hawaii State Archives. My name is Walter Kauai-Ai'a, your host here at Roots Hawaii. Joining me today is my special guest, Mr. Adam Jensen, State Archivist at the Hawaii State Archives located on the grounds of Iolani Palace. Welcome Adam. Thank you. It's taking time out of your busy schedule to join me today. It's an honor to be here. Adam, can you share with our viewers who may not know about or perhaps have never been to this or any other state archives a little bit about what they might find, the types of records they can expect to discover, and what would bring someone to the state archives? So first let's start what is an archives and why would one go there? These are warehouses, storehouses, repositories of original documents. They are different than libraries in that they have a responsibility to preserve original records of enduring legal, historical, or fiscal value. And what really differentiates them from libraries is that with records there's only a single copy, one, where libraries, you know, there's multiple books. So if one book gets lost, the dog eats it, you know, not as big of a deal. But with records, that's it, there's only one. And that record was written contemporaneously at the time of the event. And so it set aside as evidence that that event occurred by people who actually participated in the event. So there's an evidential value in those records, their primary source documents. So there's the evidence in that that is really what draws people to archives to be able to see those, which is also why they're such a much higher level of protection to those original documents as opposed to what you would see in a library. And so again, legal, historical, and fiscal value type of documents. You know, that gave me a thought. And so I guess these original records, they could literally be in our time now. If I'm searching out ancestors, for example, doing genealogical research, it is important for me to validate, you know, when I'm trying to find an ancestor or place an ancestor at a particular time or place, that having an original record is really authenticated. It's authentic documentation and proof that, you know, whatever the record states, this is the original source. And that's exactly it. You want to go to the primary source. That record that was created at the time of the birth, the marriage, the death, because newspapers as good as they are and as hard as they try to report accurately, they do make mistakes. They get people's names wrong, they get dates wrong, locations wrong, because they're doing so much, they weren't there at the time, they often do report things incorrectly. So if you take somewhat the easy route and you just rely upon the newspapers, you may not get some very, very important data points correct. But if you dig in deeper and you do the research in an archives to try and find those primary source documents, you can go to that document that occurred at the time of the birth, marriage, death, and see what was actually written, what was actually recorded. Not to say that those records are always 100 percent correct, but, you know, those are the records and they have a much, much higher probability of being accurate. So what type of records? Give me an example, and I know we'll show an image of some of these records later, but just verbally share with our viewers the kinds of records that someone has never been to the archives and is coming for the first time. What can they expect to find? So in the public archives of the state of Hawaii, our two largest researcher bases unquestionably are genealogists and land researchers. And so within those two groups, with the genealogy records, we do have birth and marriage records that go back to the very beginning, which in Hawaii is roughly about the 1830s when these types of events started to be recorded. With the land records, obviously, it all begins with the great Mahelei. And so we do have the Buco Mahelei and the royal patents, the land commission awards, the surveys, all of those types of land transactions up until about the 1910s preserved at the archives. So if I came, so these records that go back to the 1830s, are they viewable? So if I came into the archives today and wanted to look at some of these records for genealogical purposes that go back that far, how available or accessible are they to the searcher? And the reason I'm asking that question, because obviously records that go that far back, they're very, what's the word I'm looking for, they're fragile. And that's correct. And I appreciate you asking me that question. So one thing to understand is that the public archives is the public archives, which means that these are the public's records. So nothing in the public archives is not accessible. Everything is open for public inspection with very, very few exceptions. And those exceptions are written into the law for very good reasons. And for instance, you cannot access records that have medical information. You cannot access records that have other people's social security information. So PII. So with the exception of those records, everything else is publicly accessible. With that being said, we do have an obligation to future generations to protect the records because first and foremost, the duty of an archives is to protect the records. But we also have to make the records accessible. So we have to balance those two concerns, which is not always an easy thing to do because some of the records we have are extraordinarily fragile. Hawaii is an absolutely incredible place to live, but it is an absolutely horrid place to try and preserve paper. It is one of the most hostile environments to do that. The heat, the humidity, the bugs all work counter to the concept of preserving paper. Even in the controlled environment at the archives, it's still a challenge. It is still a challenge, but we have to maintain extremely strict environmental controls because fluctuations are more damaging than keeping at an ultimate set temperature. Within the archives, we do keep it at 60 degrees and 50% relative humidity, plus or minus two points on either side. So very, very tight tolerances, very low temperature, very low humidity for this environment. So getting back to the access, everything is publicly accessible. We have four levels of access that we've tried to balance that accessibility versus preservation concept. A vast majority of the records at the archives are what we consider level one. You come into the archives, you look through the finding aids, you find something that you would like to see. You fill out a request slip, you hand it to circulation, they go get the file and they'll hand it to you. And you take it into the research room and you can look through it. You can make photocopies on your own. When you're done with that folder, you turn it in, you can get the next folder in the series. So that's level one, self-service. Level two are those records that are getting to be a little bit more precarious in their condition. They're bound materials that we don't want people flipping over onto a photocopier. And so we'll still hand those to you, but we ask if you want copies, you allow us to do that for you. The level three are those that are starting to get either in really poor condition, the pages are coming out, they're really oversized, newspapers that degrade when you touch them or are getting to be really pretty intrinsically valuable, either historically or valuably, in which case we ask that you look at them at the circulation counter so we can have a little bit more direct supervision and assistance in turning pages and things of that nature. The fourth level, which is less than half a percent, it's a very, very small percentage, are those things that are of such intrinsic value that if anything were to happen to them, it would be a loss to society. And that, you know, the Buco Mejele is one of those things that are so culturally and societally important that we have to do everything we can to protect them and to make sure absolutely nothing happens to them. I was going to ask you, you know, give us an example of that less than one percent type of records that you have that are just too, you know, invaluable to just. Abraham Lincoln's letter to Kamehameha the Fifth expressing his profound sorrow upon hearing the death of Kamehameha the Fourth. That's one of those types of letters. It is just so incredibly important that if you want to see that, you have to make an appointment. And then my staff is the one who handles that material and will be the ones turning the pages because either it is it is so incredibly important or it is so incredibly fragile that very, very special handling is required. But again, that is about 50 cubic feet out of 14,000 cubic feet of material that we're responsible for. It's in that level four category, you know, because I heard, you know, through friends of mine that, you know, the Hawaii State Archives, they don't they don't allow you to see records. But what I'm hearing from you is that, yes, but perhaps in this case of those types of records, less than one percent, I could still view them. But you're not going to hand it over to me. Staff is going to come and they're going to handle or they're going to manage the records. I can view them perhaps, but I'm not going to be able to handle it. That is correct. Because it's it's important to understand these are not our records. You know, these are the public's records. These records belong to the people. We are the custodians. We are the guardians of these records. And so we do have a duty to future generations to make sure that they have every bit of utility and enjoyment and research ability out of these records that the current generation has. And so in order to fulfill that obligation, you know, we do have to put some rules on these things. We can't just, you know, yeah, we we understand this is the only copy in the world and it's incredibly important. But you know, here you have, you know, get to the photocopier, throw it through the automatic document feeder, give it back to us when you're done. We have to be, you know, conscientious about these responsibilities and these duties, and if it means a slight inconvenience for the researcher, you know, we understand and appreciate that, but that duty to protect and that duty to future generations has to be taken into consideration as well. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because, you know, I think it behooves all of the people of Hawaii. You know, first of all, to you, Adam Jensen, thank you. Big mahalo, mahalo nui, for being the kind of person you are and caring that much for my people's records. I guess I could say that as a native Hawaiian. I just want to take, you know, just to break away from Adam. Adam, we could be here for for hours. Adam is just a wealth of knowledge, but I'd like to share a little bit about to our viewers who Adam Jensen is and what qualifies him to be the keeper and caretaker of the public records of Hawaii. Mr. Jensen's educational and professional background is quite impressive. He will be defending his PhD in archival studies from the University of British Columbia this September. He's received numerous industry certifications and awards in records management and document imaging. His professional career that spans almost 20 years of experience in and including records management, information management, state archivists, digital archivists, consultant and director of a leading electronic records management group here in Hawaii in addition to his current position as state archivists. Wow, all hail to you, Mr. Jensen. You're too kind. But if I could be so bold as to speak on behalf to you, Adam. Other people of Hawaii, mahalo, mahalo nui, for you to you. And I remember the first time I met you. The first thing, the first words that you uttered, these are not my records. These are the records of the people of Hawaii. These are public records. So I want our viewers to know that Adam Jensen takes that very seriously. And if any of you have not been recently, you've been at the state archives now at the head for how many years? Three years. Three years. I remember I was an avid visitor to the archives back in the early seventies doing my own genealogical research. I found I found it extremely friendly back then. But I want to say in the three years that Mr. Jensen has been at the helm at the archives, both himself as well as his staff are extremely friendly. And as Adam himself said to us this morning, that these records are the public records and are always available to the public. How we get to view them, perhaps, may be determined by the records themselves and the nature of the records and the sensitivity of the records. And so as as people of Hawaii, I think we need to be sensitive to that that fact so that people at the state archives and Mr. Jensen can continue to preserve, as he said, for future generations, the public records of Hawaii. Well, I think we'll come back. We wanted to show some images, but we're going to take a 60 second break and we'll be back with more from discovering and connecting here at Roots Hawaii and with our special guests, State Archivist, Mr. Adam Jensen. I'm your host, Walter Kawaii for Roots Hawaii. We'll be right back. Hello, my name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters, aloha. Hi, my boohai. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinau Power, Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhai and aloha. Aloha, Mike Alco and welcome back to our episode here, Discovering and Connecting with the Hawaii State Archives. I'm your host, Walter Kauai, for Roots Hawaii. And we're just talking with our special guest, Mr. Adam Jensen, Hawaii State Archivist. Adam, so we have a couple of images. I'm going to ask our engineers if they could throw up this first image. There it is. Can you tell us and our viewers what they're seeing on the screen? So these are text assessment records from 1887. So as you start to get into genealogy records, you know, the low hanging fruit are the ones that most people think of, marriage, birth, death records. Particularly earlier in the kingdom era, those records were not necessarily prevalent for all areas of the islands and for all people, because that was kind of a Western influence and a concept that particularly very early on in the kingdom history, not everybody took it. So taxes, on the other hand, was a custom that the government loved because that meant money. And so those are one of the things that we encourage people to really start to mine as well, because that does help to start, provide more information on individuals that you may not have found marriage, birth, death records on. So you can get deeper into things with the types of tax records. So like you said, this would be considered more like high hanging fruit. Exactly. As you get the easy ones, you start going deeper, you start hitting census, tax records, enlistment records. If they start to get into military offices, voter registration records, you start getting into what other types of information did the government start to collect. Oh, that's really interesting. OK, I'm going to ask our engineer if he could throw up this second image here, which is a map of the Pacific Islands. And there are some excerpts of Queen Lily O'Killani from her diary I see in the back there. Can you tell us a little bit about that, Adam? So that speaks to some of the diversity in our collection. And while we are primarily a governmental archives, which means records produced by the government, that's not all that we do. We do have over 500 personal manuscript collections. We do have over almost 3,000 maps in our collection. We do have over half a million photographs. Oh, my God. So the diversity is fairly broad in the types of materials that we do have. Her Majesty's manuscript collection, for instance, is incredibly beautiful. Thanks to a grant from the Queen Lily O'Killani Trust, we've started digitizing her entire personal manuscript collection. And you saw the scans from her diary with the intent of being able to put that online. So we have multiple digitization efforts going on because you can't be a public archives if the public can't access it. And so it's not fair to the neighbor islands to require them to travel to O'ahu Monday through Friday, nine to four to be able to access these records. Well, even if you're on O'ahu, what if you physically are not able to travel? These are still your records. You still should have access to them. So we're trying to get the most important records that we have accessible to everyone, everywhere, at any time. And so that's part of our digital initiative is to get these online and make them accessible. So I heard through the grapevine that you have a program right now working with several entities to digitize these original records. And that's all in a process of making them accessible and available to people. Like you said, on a neighbor island can't get down, but they'll be able to view this online. I'm assuming through that process of image capturing, indexing and digitizing the records. That is correct. We have four major projects going on right now. So the QLT is working on digitizing Her Majesty's manuscript collection, the Queen's Trust records and Curtis Ealkea's manuscript collection. So family search is working on doing just a huge number of our genealogy records. Ancestry just completed doing the divorce records and our genealogy books. And then we also just received a half million dollar grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources funded by the Mellon Foundation to digitize our foreign office and executive records, starting from 1790 up through 1900, so that we can focus on early Aalala Hawaii records. So the language aspect, the vocabulary, the sentence structures, as well as the transition of governments from the overthrow through annexation. How did that occur? What was the documentation that was left behind again by the people who participated in these events? Well, that's incredible. And accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime. So you and the State Archives has really embraced the advancements that have taken place in the technology of things that are available now to enhance one's ability to have greater access and availability to these records. What we have to, I mean, we have this obligation because these are public records and there are other islands. And the geography is such that we've got this obligation and it's also this moral obligation that the beauty contained in these records, this is the history of the people to make them accessible is, it's a wonderful thing. Reading through them is incredible. I'm just sitting here, I'm getting chicken skin listening to you, you know, as a native Hawaiian, the tremendous resource that the Hawaii State Archives has always been. But as we move into the future generations, for future generations, these records are being preserved and made, really made available. There's a tremendous amount of effort, I know, going on right now to make these records now and into the future accessible to the large masses of people, am I correct? That is correct. All right, well, I got a couple of questions for you and I know we have more images. What is the mission of the Hawaii State Archives? So the mission of the Archives is to protect records of enduring legal, historical, or fiscal value is kind of the pat answer. But the way we interpret that is to protect records that document your rights, identity, property, or history. So any records that fall into those categories, rights, property, identity, or history, it's our duty to protect them permanently. And that's a long time. Yeah, I was going to say that's in forever. How large would you say the holdings that you have at the Hawaii State Archives are? We estimate we have about 14,400 cubic feet of paper records, 2,500 maps, 38,000 rare books in our library collection, and over half a million photographs. And is it the intent long term to digitize as much of these records, if not all of them? We will never scan all of them, because some of the records we have, we keep for legal purposes that really from a researcher standpoint, if we have one person every 50 years, express interest in wanting to see them, I would be surprised. But those that have high research utilization, high interest to the general population, we absolutely were pursue every avenue, whether it's through state budget, through grants, through partnerships to get them digitized and make those accessible. Um, how diverse are the holdings that you have? Very diverse, you know, again, primarily focused on governmental records, but we do have the personal manuscript collection, which is really pretty amazing. We already mentioned courtesy Alkea, Her Majesty's personal manuscript collection. We also have Queen Emma's personal manuscript collection, Duke Kahanamoku, Henry Berger. So we have his records from when he was with the Royal Hawaiian Band. We have half a dozen of the Barks, the ships. There are ships logs from the early days of trading in Honolulu Harbor. So it's just an amazing collection that every day we have researchers coming in with these really odd questions that, oh, you know, I really don't think we have anything along that line and they dig stuff up. It's unbelievable. I guess I guess that goes back to the old adage when somebody's really intent on finding information about their family, you know, someone's going to lead the way and they'll have it. You know, our time is running short, Adam, and I know, you know, we could do a whole other segment. But I'd like to ask our engineers to throw up, I think it's image 1281, which I believe is the 50th anniversary of the Hawaii State Capitol building. If they could get that image up on screen for us. Well, that is actually the picture of the Hawaii State Archives, correct? That is correct. And that's where all of these precious and invaluable records are stored. Now, that looks to me like it's just one level, but I mean, do you have more levels than that street level? We do. So the solid top is actually where the public archives are stored. So all of the materials are held up there. And as you can see, there's no windows. There's only one bank vault door in and out. Right. So the facility itself was constructed specifically as an archival facility. So it's extra strong, very thick walls to help keep the environmental controls in a high level of security. So we're very fortunate in that way. And the reminder of the time capsule brought up that, you know, from a diversity standpoint, we also maintain over a thousand artifacts in our collection. So we have on loan to the Eolani Palace over 260 objects, including many of the very prestige items that they have on display, including Kalakawa's crown, the thrones, all the paintings in the Great Hall. Those are all things that are held in the public trust, which means those are all things that are owned by the people. Sure. Well, I'm going to, I know we have less than a minute, but I'm going to ask my engineer if he could throw up one more picture. This is image 1285. And I believe this is a picture that shows Queen Kapiolani, along with Princess Liliuokolani, and they're in, I believe, London, England. And what are they exactly there for, Adam? So they're there for Queen Victoria's Jubilee, so the fiftieth year of her reign. I see. And to me, one of the most amazing things is not only do we have these absolutely incredible photos from that event. We also have Liliu's guestbook that she brought with her on the trip. So the Hawaiian delegation signed the first page and the people that she met on her journey is from that point forward up and through about 1907. So as she she went to D.C. to fight for her restoration, as she was back at Washington Place, she had this guestbook with her. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in it. Persian princes signed in it. I mean, it's just an absolutely incredible, incredible piece of history. Well, well, our viewers out there, our time is spent and we barely scratched the surface, as you can see today with Mr. Adam Jensen, Hawaii State Archive. But hopefully we've piqued the interest of our viewers, answered a few questions and assured the people of Hawaii that Mr. Adam Jensen, Hawaii State Archive is, is, without question, the right person to be the caretaker of Hawaii's records. On behalf of Roots, Hawaii and the people of Hawaii, thank you, my friend. Thank you very much for all that you do, your staff and numerous volunteers in keeping and caring for and always providing a very friendly and professional environment for all of us to discover and connect with our ancestors at the Hawaii State Archives. On behalf of Roots, Hawaii, I'm your host, Walter Kauai, until next month, Aloha no kakou.