MAU KA LEO: safeguarding hawai'i's genealogy of knowledge and lived experience [through MAU KA LEO, bishop museum proposes to capture institutional and cultural knowledge held by staff so that the…

The Bishop Museum was awarded a $491,368 Project Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities under the Promotion of the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities program (CFDA 45.169). The grant will support the "Mau Ka Leo" project to digitize the Museum's collections and make them publicly accessible online through narrative components and multimedia created by Hawaiian staff. Specifically, the project will retain 15 positions and hire a digital humanities specialist to aggregate the Museum's collections and digital assets into a single system allowing global accessibility and integration of narrative components. The system will utilize CultureConnect to create a platform for the digitized materials and narratives. Additionally, $65,251 will be subawarded for consultant services, software licenses, and CultureConnect fees to support the digitization efforts. The funding will allow critical institutional and cultural knowledge held by Bishop Museum staff to be documented and preserved for future generations.

Activities

This project will retain 15 positions and hire a digital humanities specialist. The museum will aggregate their museum collections database, digital assets, and related materials into one system for global accessibility. This system will also allow for the integration of narrative components, created by the project?s hawai?IAN staff, which the program will draw on to provide explanations of the objects? Importance. Funding will also allow this project to utilize cultureconnect to create a platform for their digital materials and multimedia narratives. Lastly, this project will allow the bishop museum to digitize assets for their new system and platform.   &nbsp

Expected outcomes

This project will allow the bishop museum to digitize and make accessible materials within their collections. IT will retain 15 positions and hire a digital humanities specialist. IT will allow the migration of the museum?s digital records and materials into one system, and IT will allow them to create a platform through cultureconnect to display those digitized materials and their multimedia narratives. &nbsp

Intended beneficiaries

The local and diasporic hawai?IAN community and an international audience, who will benefit from engaging with and hearing the stories of objects from hawai?IAN life and culture.  subrecipient beneficiaries: this project will subaward $65,251 for consultant services, software licenses, adobe subscriptions, and cultureconnect fees. ]