Kaipuleohone Archive

Kaipuleohone is the University of Hawai'i's digital ethnographic archive for audio and video recordings as well as photographs, notes, dictionaries, transcriptions, and other materials related to small and endangered languages.

The archive was established to ensure that priceless and unique research recordings will be digitized, described, and safely housed in perpetuity.

Kaipuleohone is a member of the Digital Endangered Languages and Music Archiving Network (DELAMAN), and conforms to international archiving standards for digital archives. Files are stored at high resolution and the metadata conforms to the Open Language Archives Community, Open Archives Initiative and Dublin Core. All digital files are curated by the Library system at the University of Hawai'i's D-Space repository, ScholarSpace. The current catalog can be searched at Scholarspace here.

Every item in the collection has access conditions specified by the depositor on the deposit form. For more information please email the Kaipuleohone director at lpappas[at]hawaii[dot]edu.

As of March 2025, Kaipuleohone includes approximately 5.2TB of language data, most of which is open-access. The bulk of data in Kaipuleohone are audiovisual recordings. The archive also seeks to digitize handwritten and printed materials.

Kaipuleohone means a 'gourd of sweet words' and represents the notion of a collection of language material that would otherwise be unlocatable in personal collections. We are very grateful to Laiana Wong for suggesting this name and for allowing us to use it as the name of this archive.