Audio, Art, Genealogy
Art: The earliest pieces in the Museum's documentary art collection are drawings by artists who accompanied European expeditions in the 18th century. The art collection provides early visual documents of the changes which have occurred in Hawai'i and the Pacific. The collection is indexed by artist and subject.
Audio: The Audio Collection consists of thousands of reel-to-reel and cassette tapes of mele (chants & songs), oral histories, and the music of Hawai'i and other Pacific islands. The most important sub-collections of audio are the Roberts Collection of Hawaiian mele dating from 1923-24 and the Kuluwaimaka Collection (the voice of a chanter once in King Kalakaua's court) dating from 1933.
Notable among the oral histories are those led by Mary Kawena Pukui, who interviewed residents of six Hawaiian Islands in the 1950s and 60s. The oral histories cover Hawaiian cultural subjects, stories or the interviewees' lives, and the places they lived. Most of the oral histories were recorded in the Hawaiian language and are a boon to students of the language interested in listening to native speakers of Hawaiian.
Genealogy: The Genealogy Collection in the Bishop Museum Archives consists mainly of 19th century Hawaiian genealogies prepared for the ali'i, including ko'ihonua or genealogical chants. The collection is available on microfilm and there is an index by family name.
The Archives also has a complete microfilm set of Marriages, Births, and Deaths in Hawai'i for the approximate period of 1850 to 1950. Photographs of family members are often found in the collections of Hawaiian portraits by L.R. Sullivan, 1920-1921; portraits by M. Koga made in Kea'au Hawai'i, 1915-1930s; portraits by Honolulu photographer, On Char, c. 1915-1930s. Various card, book, and online indexes are available to access material.