Abstract
The Historic Fashion Collection housed at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa holds approximately 25,000 items from the following subcollections: Hawaiian, Asian, Global, and Western. The Hawai’i State Senate declared the Historic Fashion Collection a State Treasure in 2009. In Fall 2024, I was hired as a Curatorial Assistant to help with the digital preservation and collections management of the Hawai’i subcollection which contains approximately 1300 items. It is a crucial collection that illustrates the influences and impacts of different cultural groups on contemporary Hawaiian clothing resulting from colonialism, the plantation era, the statehood period, and beyond. The Hawai’i subcollection includes Aloha shirts c. 1920’s- present day, muumuu, holomu, and moloku c. late 19th century, kapa and tapa barkcloth pieces from various Pacific Islands, and Hawaiian quilts. The project’s main goal is to provide best practices for digital preservation and care of the collection with the use of database software to host not only object inventories but also digital public access to the subcollection. Community collaboration, dialogue, and use of the collection is heavily prioritized as we implement social media engagement while documenting the digital preservation of the collection. This paper seeks to understand how transparency in the digital preservation process can foster community engagement, further awareness of collection needs, and document the collection’s inherent value as a cultural heritage site requiring support from donors to maintain its status as a Hawai’i State Treasure.
Presenters
Terri Lee BixbyCuratorial Assistant, College of Family and Consumer Sciences (CTAHR), University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Hawaii, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Civic, Political, and Community Studies
KEYWORDS
Digital Preservation, Archives, Collections Management, Community Collaboration, Public History
