Hawaiian e-Library and the glories of the information age

Last month saw the debut of Ulukau, a site offering a variety of Hawaiian language and translation resources. My personal favorite component of the site is the newspaper archive, which is an ongoing operation: currently about 250 pages have been digitized, fully searchable text, and images of some of the most significant newspapers are available by purchase on CD-ROM. There is also the Hawaiian Bible page, including images from the 1868 edition and, eventually, full text from the 1994 American Bible Society edition. You can look up specific verses, too, which is a neat feature. This is not to be confused with Da Jesus Book, the recent pidgin translation, though that too was done with more serious purpose than is usually credited.

Finally, the Dictionaries. Ralph, the word for"history" is mo`olelo, and the word for"father" is makua or makua kane, so Cliopatriarch translates, roughly, to mo`olelo makua.

There it is. All of a sudden, you can seriously study Hawaiian language and history and culture from anywhere with a phone line and a computer less than four years old. I love the present.