Explore Our Image Collections

The visually stunning propaganda posters produced by the new Soviet government from 1917 onward are fairly well-known. Communist Party slogans to the masses were featured. There are many books on the subject, and several good collections now available on the internet: Hoover Institution, Duke University, New York Public Library, Swarthmore, Library of Congress, and so on. There are also sites on Yandex in Russian.Our collection of 145 posters covers the Cold War period: roughly the end of World War II until Gorbachev’s perestroika/glasnost era (1984), and a few into the late 1980s. Socialist realism art and utopian images of life in the Soviet Union dominate. Political propaganda,…

In October 2004, heavy rain caused multimillion-dollar flood damage to the Manoa area, including Hamilton Library. Over the next 4 years about 10,000 maps were cleaned and restored; an additional 40,000 were sent for work at a mainland contractor. This collection features some of the restored maps treated by University of Hawaii at Manoa Preservation staff.More information about the preservation aspects of the map treatments may be found in the document Protocol for Conservation Treatment: Recovery of Hawaiian Maps and Unique Aerial Photographs from Univ. of Hawai’i, Manoa Flood Damage [http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/14473]

Henry P. Edmunds and William A. Bryan were both photographers of the early 20th century. Although they lived very different lives, they shared the experience of Rapanui, or Easter Island, during the early 1900s. Each took remarkable photographs documenting Rapanui's archaeological wonders and everyday life, several of which are presented here.For more information about the photographers, the provenance of this collection click here.  A glossary is also available.In addition to the University of Hawai'i Library's holdings, Honolulu's Bishop Museum also has an extensive collection of Henry P. Edmunds' photographs.

Dr. George Grace (b. September 8, 1921, d. January 17, 2015) was a professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, where he served on the faculty in the Department of Linguistics from 1964 until 1991. In 1955, while a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, Dr. Grace began work for the Tri-Institutional Pacific Project (TRIPP) — a project of Pacific anthropological research funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and administered by Yale University, the University of Hawaii, and Honolulu's Bernice P. Bishop Museum. His task was to produce a classification of the Austronesian languages of Oceania, with particular attention to the position of Polynesian languages. In 1955,…

With a magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter scale it was the deadliest earthquake in Japanese history, and at the time was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the region. The Great Kanto Earthquake 関東大震災写真集 site contains 199 images, which were scanned from black & white still photos matted on a black background. The album may be supplemental materials to the publication: The Great earthquake of September 1st, 1923: a record from the reports of the "Japan Chronicle" of the destruction of Yokohama and Tokyo and the other ravages wrought. Kobe: Japan Chronicle Office. OCLC: 768291265. The report has been digitized and accessible from the National Library of Australia…

This digital photo collection by photographer and documentary filmmaker Paul Barreto focuses on the Tboli and Ubo communities around Lake Sebu, South Cotabato, Philippines. The images were taken during two visits to Lake Sebu. Paul first met Boi Myrna Pula, a Tboli cultural worker and storyteller, in May 2024 during a speaking tour in San Diego, California. She invited him and his partner, Kristine Angeles, to visit the community and introduced them to fellow cultural worker Mechie Belleza Mafok and Datu Benjie Manuel, School Head of the Tboli Sebù Senior High School. Boi Myrna, Mechie, and Datu Benjie work collaboratively on cultural preservation and advocacy. According to Boi Myrna,…

Images of "tourist travel" to and in Hawaii from 1956 and the early 1970s taken by Leslie Sheraton, described as "an avid photographer". The slides were in the possession of Leslie Sheraton until his death in 1978. His son, Don Sheraton then inherited the records until his death in 2003, when they passed into the custody of his widow, Kathy Ingraham, who donated the slides to the Hawaiian Collection at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2012.

The Dietrich Varez Collection includes 85 different images as well as related correspondence between Varez and John P. Charlot. The handwritten letters from Varez, dated between 1986-1990, discuss: his donations via John Charlot intended for the Jean Charlot Collection; the prints; and brief mentions of his personal life. He illustrated books including one by his friend John Charlot, The Kamapua‘a Literature: The Classical Traditions of the Hawaiian Pig God as a Body of Literature. Three of the prints are additional donations from Bronwen Solyom and Carol Lagner. The Dietrich Varez Collection is established separately to increase visibility and because it was not part of Jean Charlot's…

This collection of posters covers the late 1960s to 70s. There are a wide variety of topics dealing with film, children, travel, architecture, Copernicus, economics, printing, graphics, folklore, archeology, and WWII commemoration. A useful background to Polish posters in general may be found at https://www.illustrationhistory.org/essays/reflecting-the-soul-of-a-nation-polish-poster-art

In 2002, the library acquired the Hawaiian music collection of Dirk Vogel, who had been collecting Hawaiian music since the 1920s. The collection contains 6,000 78s, 2,650 LPs, 900 45s and thousands of other items.Also in 2002, the library received a bequest of 2,533 Hawaiian music recordings from the estate of James Grant Cathro of Glasgow, Scotland, who died in 1999. Mr. Cathro collected the recordings, with special interest in steel guitar music, over the course of many years. This collection contains 2,056 phonodiscs (33-1/3, 45 and 78 RPM speeds); 236 cassettes and various other recordings. The Vogel and Cathro collections serve as the foundation of the Hawaiian Music Collection, which…