Phase II: He waipuna (Workflow to create authority templates)

Ideate

The objective at this phase was for the project team to co-create 100 bi-lingual ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and English authority records to be applied to 200 resources within the University of Hawai’iʻs Hamilton Library Hawaiian collection. The original meta-model, developed and tested during the pilot project, Lau ā Lau Ka ʻIke, served as the starting point for the project team to identify which knowledge domains to build out into terms. Incorporating insights from the project loea (knowledge & technical experts), the core team began by identifying the knowledge expertise already present amongst individual team members. Examples of this included individual team members’ familiarity and expertise with specific ʻāina (land areas) and cultural practices such as Hula. Additionally, the team took into account current research trends among students and topics of cultural or political importance, such as Maunakea. Taking these factors into consideration, the team sought to identify and develop terms that would have the highest potential impact of improved description for the collection. These considerations led the team to identify the first three domains from the meta-model for term development: ʻĀina (land), Hana (cultural practices), and Akua (deities). 

The team was exhaustive in considering the ways we could approach the work of selecting terms and drafting authority templates for each domain. The core team and project loea used tools such as data visualization and mind mapping to build out each knowledge domain and prioritize terms for record creation. Every decision made by the core team was discussed and evaluated, including which tools and technology would be most appropriate, which sources to use in developing the records, how sources would be attributed, and identifying or creating new ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi terms and phrases to use within the authority records. The intent was and is to represent kuanaʻike Hawaiʻi, or Hawaiian worldview, as best we could considering our own knowledge and expertise.

Develop

Unique authority templates were drafted by the project team for each knowledge domain. Drafts were completed in stages and were iterative at each stage. The ʻāina knowledge domain was developed first by the core team and was built off of previous work done towards a Hawaiʻi Knowledge Organization System (HKOS). Together, the team identified and prioritized the fields which would make up the ʻāina authority template and the metadata specialist recorded the instructions for filling out each template. The team then collectively identified the 55 terms that would be developed into bi-lingual records. The ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi specialist led the creation of the authority records for each term as well as the translation of the template instructions. The templates and records were evaluated by the core team as well as the project loea for clarity, accuracy, and cultural rigor with regard to how the knowledge was represented and the use of language. Each stage was then repeated for the creation of 30 terms for the Hana knowledge domain and the 15 terms for the Akua domain, which was eventually renamed the Moʻokūʻauhau domain in a current iteration of the meta-model.

For each domain, a diverse group of terms were purposefully selected to ensure that the templates accurately represent kuanaʻike Hawaiʻi through the template fields. Throughout this iterative process, there were many questions, comments, and tensions that arose, as was expected. Considering that the core team are second language speakers, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi was one major area of continued back and forth discussion amongst the team and with project loea.  In the instance of authority templates, some of the vocabulary and short phrases for fields were chosen based on existing examples of similar work. The ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi skin of Lloyd Soehren’s Inoa ʻĀina Database on Ulukau: The Hawaiian Electronic Database was especially helpful. Other terms were proposed and chosen by the core team with the support of loea ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. The most prominent example of this is in the proximity fields which are discussed below.

The work of scoping and prioritizing fields was another area of continued discussion between the core team and project loea, particularly in the ʻāina domain. Proximity was identified as a necessary field within the template to ensure that the relationships between ʻāina were accurately represented. Both in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and English, this proved to be a challenging field to define. While there were multiple iterations of this field, ultimately, the team decided on phrases that described the relationship between land divisions, such as an ahupuaʻa within a moku and vice versa. These fields were called:

  • Nā Hiʻona ʻāīna o loko o kēia wahi | Part to Whole
    • Land features within this place, such as an ahupuaʻa or natural feature within a moku
  • Nā Hiʻona ʻāīna nona kēia wahi | Whole to Part
    • Land feature this place belongs to, such as the moku an ahupuaʻa falls within

Each stage of development required in-depth discussion amongst the core team and with project loea ensuring that decisions made were done thoroughly and thoughtfully. For information regarding the final authority records please see the Domains and Terms section of this website as well as the vocabulary tree/lists for each knowledge domain: ʻĀina, Hana, and Akua.

Related materials:

Evaluate & Revise

Authority templates and records were evaluated by the core team and the project loea in accordance with the overall project goal of representing content and language in a way that is culturally rigorous while enhancing description of Hawaiʻi knowledge materials. While the core team was continually discussing the templates and records throughout the development process, formal feedback was also collected and discussed through meetings with project loea specializing in ʻike Hawaiʻi as well as loea specializing in knowledge organization systems.

One way that feedback was collected for the ʻāina authority templates was through a google form. Google forms had been an initial option for the core team to create the authority records. It was eventually determined that google sheets was a more appropriate tool for creating records because it was easier to make edits and compare populated fields between terms. The team revisited the google form as an effective means of collecting formal feedback from project loea and the core team who were able to populate authority template fields with their own examples of ʻāina terms. After completing the form, the core team and project loea then discussed the process of filling out the form and whether the fields were collecting the most pertinent information regarding the ʻāina term they chose. Loea had chosen a variety of ʻāina terms spanning from natural features, such as Kaʻuiki, a prominent land feature known as a puʻu, at Hāna, Maui, to well known land divisions, such as the ahupuaʻa of Waikīkī. In the discussion, experiences were shared amongst members and records were compared to one another to better understand what worked, what didn’t and what could be improved in both the short and long term. Small revisions were done at this stage to improve phrasing and improve process for remaining domains. Larger structural issues were noted as things to be addressed at later stages of the project. One example of an issue to be addressed in the long term was how to distinctly present natural features, such as puʻu (hills), mauna (mountain peaks), wailele (waterfalls), etc. from political features, which includes all politically created land divisions, ʻili, ahupuaʻa, moku, etc. It was determined that the ʻāina authority template structure was minimally sufficient for describing both types of ʻāina terms, however, natural features would benefit from the addition of more fields to the current structure to better illuminate aspects of natural features such as plants, animals, wahi pana etc. 

Authority templates for the Hana and Akua knowledge domains were also evaluated through discussion with project loea through presentations. Individual records from each domain were presented with data visualizations to demonstrate both the structure of each domain as well as the enhanced relationships that were apparent after applying the terms to Hawaiian collection materials. More information about application can be found in the section titled “Phase III: He wai, e inu.” Additionally, our data visualization specialist developed a more current representation of our meta-model. This model was presented to project loea to demonstrate the shifts made by the core team over the course of the project to build out specific knowledge domains.