The George Grace linguistic research and slides of Melanesia collection, 1955-1956

About the Collection

The George Grace Linguistic Research and Slides of Melanesia collection consists of twenty-nine field notebooks, related correspondence, and roughly 550 35mm color slides. The bulk of the materials in the collection were produced by Dr. George Grace between 1955 and 1956, before, during and shortly after a year-long fieldwork trip that saw him visiting Hawaii, Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Papua (a.k.a. West Papua and formerly Irian Jaya), and the Solomon Islands. These materials were donated to the Hamilton Library's Pacific Collection in 2007. The entire collection was digitized beginning in 2008, with support of a grant from the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance (PRDLA) and the Oceania Digital Library project. The project was completed in 2009. All print and photographic materials have been preserved by the Pacific Collection, and are available for public examination.

Site Credits

Collection arrangement, text and meta-data editing: Stu Dawrs, Pacific Specialist Librarian, Hamilton Library

Scanning and data entry: Tanya Taumua, Pacific Collection student assistant, Hamilton Library

A note on photo captioning: Roughly one-third of the slides in the Grace Collection were originally labeled by Dr. Grace, either at the time of their creation or in the ensuing years, prior to their donation to the University of Hawaii at Manoa library. These captions have been reproduced as they appear on the slides, including geographic names that are no longer in current use (see below for more on geographic name conventions). In 2007, Dr. Grace worked with Pacific Specialist librarian Stu Dawrs in an attempt to identify the remaining unlabeled slides. In cases where new identifications have been made, the online captions appear in brackets [], and use currently accepted geographic names. These online captions have not been added to the physical collection. In instances where a number appears in brackets in the captioning (e.g. [082]) no positive identification has been made; the number in these cases refers to the unique reference number given to each slide at the time of its donation to the library

Regarding geographic names: As is the case in many parts of the Pacific, various locations in Melanesia have undergone a series of name changes over the last fifty years. This is particularly true of the western half of the island of New Guinea, which has been known variously as Netherlands (or Dutch) New Guinea, Irian Jaya, West Papua and Papua. These name changes are not inconsequential, and carry with them many political, social and cultural implications. In recognition of these facts, this online collection uses the following naming conventions:

    1. In the instances where Dr. Grace originally captioned his slides, the naming standard of the day has been retained, both for historical purposes and to maintain the integrity of the relationship between this digital collection and the original physical materials.

    1. In all other instances, the currently accepted geographic name (as of 2008) has been used. The one exception to this rule is the western half of the island of New Guinea, which is generically referred to as "West New Guinea," owing to the ongoing political issues surrounding the naming of this region.

  1. Just as the original materials that comprise the physical Grace Collection document a specific time period in the history of Melanesia (i.e., 1955-1956), we consider this online collection to also be a product of a specific time (2008) -- therefore, barring unforseen circumstances, future name changes (beyond 2008) will not be incorporated into the site.

For more information on specific names and locations as they appear in this online collection, please consult the online glossary.

Digitization Procedure

All images in this database were scanned from 35mm slides, originally as 400dpi RGB tifs, scaled to 400 percent. They were later resized to the dimensions used in the database and saved as jpeg files. No other digital manipulation (cropping, color correction, etc.) has been used.


Commercial use of any of the property in the collection is prohibited without specific written permission from the Donor. The Donor retains all literary, artistic and intellectual property rights for material in the collection. NOTE: Donor has obtained no consent from any person portrayed in any photograph for the public display of his or her image. Copyright is retained by the creators of these materials, their descendants, or the repository if copyright has been signed over, as stipulated by United States copyright law. It is the responsibility of the user to determine any copyright restrictions, obtain written permission, and pay any fees necessary for the reproduction or proposed use of the materials. See the Usage Rights information page for further details.