About

Mission & Purpose

The ‘Iolani School Archives collects, organizes, preserves and provides access to historical records of ‘Iolani School, in order to make these collections available for research and educational purposes.

Facility

The ‘Iolani Archives space, inside the Sullivan Center for Innovation and Leadership, was generously donated by Kenneth J. Lee, Class of 1961, and Jennifer K. L. Lee.

Overview

A non-circulating collection of 'Iolani School materials including photographs, institutional and student publications, videos, and memorabilia. Materials collected reflect the programs, policy, organization, functions, and other activities related to the daily operations of 'Iolani School. These documents, memorabilia, and other materials promote an understanding of and appreciation for the history of the school as well as the individuals who laid its foundations and nurtured its development. The Archivist works to collect, organize, preserve and provide access to these historical records. The educational program component strives to connect current 'Iolani K-12 students with historical events through supplemental experiences with primary sources. Use of the collection is available to faculty, staff, students, and the public by appointment.

Contact: archives@iolani.org

History & Progress of the Archives Program

Material began to be collected by school librarians in the late 1970s. Dubbed Iolaniana, this led to the establishment of an Iolaniana Room within the Upper School Library; then, over time, dedicated space as the 'Iolani School Archives. The collection was organized and managed part-time by librarians, using Dewey Decimal Classification in lieu of archival organization standards, until the mid-1990s.

In the mid-1990s, professional archivists took over stewardship in the part-time Archivist position. Due to the part-time hours of the position, scope of stewardship was limited; however, archivists were able to contribute invaluably by creating subject authority controls and partial inventories. Prior to 2014, this important work was the extent of collection description information. From 2010 until its elimination in 2018, there was also a half-time technician position who generated metadata to increase research access points. The Archivist position became full-time in July 2018. Unfortunately, the Archivist position was suspended for school-year 2025/26 rendering the collection inaccessible. As of Fall 2026, the position is part-time. The institutional and community needs remain unchanged.

After an observation process of user needs and patterns from 2014-2016, the archivist began restructuring the repository in 2016 to honor the tenets and theories of archival science with a focus on the 'Iolani community's access needs. This resulted in the reunion of collection materials that had been separated as result of the imposed Dewey Decimal Classification system; as well as assignment of the record group and manuscript collection structure. These methods improve the preservation of provenance, original order, and context. The benefit to users is situational insight or insight to the collector in the creation of collections, lending itself to the value of context which is found in the aggregate of a collection.

The Archives remained open during restructuring in an effort to maintain the level of customer service to which our community is accustom. Due to this, as well as the Archivist being the sole staff member, assignment of identifiers and user access points was completed in 2020 and rehousing is ongoing. The restructuring is contributing to the discoverability and accessibility of collection materials.

The content management system ArchivesSpace was acquired in January 2019 via a Lyrasis hosted instance. Inputting of collection holdings and creation of enhanced descriptions is ongoing. The resulting 'Iolani School Archives Catalog is available online.

The educational programming and curricular integration component also began in 2016. 'Iolani School students are in the unique position of having an archival repository on-campus, affording them the opportunity for early experiences in developing primary source and visual literacy using place-based materials that supplement existing curriculum. Examples of archival teaching and learning experiences available to 'Iolani School faculty and students can be found in the Lessons & Activities tab of the Archives LibGuide.

In addition, the Archivist is striving to create digital archives program capability and access. In January 2024 the repository acquired Preservica, a hosted digital preservation system. Inputting of collection materials and metadata has begun.