Public archives are known for documenting land and genealogy, but Hawaiʻi State Archivist Adam Jansen said Hawaiʻi State Archives does much more than that.
Archives Month, a month-long virtual exhibition that begins on Thursday, Oct. 1, highlights the archives’ special collections that people might not know about. The month will explore how Waikīkī is represented in art and music, and has changed over time through a virtual exhibition. Some of the material has never been displayed online before.
The first week of Archives Month focuses on 19th century history of Waikīkī, including the first known map of the area documented by a Russian expedition. The second week looks at the representation of Waikīkī in art and music and the third week is all about Waikīkī hotels. The fourth week is about the development of Waikīkī, featuring photos from the Williams Family’s collection of construction projects between Chinatown and Waikīkī. The last week focuses on the conservation of Waikīkī with the display of the personal files of Nancy Bannick, who advocated to preserve Oʻahu’s historical places.
In the third week of October for Archives Month, the third week will be all about Waikīkī hotels. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, for example, turns 100 years old in February 2027. (Courtesy of DAGS Hawaiʻi State Archives) 
The archive “collects, preserves and makes available to the public” government records and special collections. (Courtesy DAGS Hawaiʻi State Archives)
Archives Month material will be available on the Hawaiʻi State Archive website. The archive, which is open to the public between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, will also post daily on their social media pages.
Jansen said that not everyone has the availability and ability to visit the archive in person, so celebrating Archives Month virtually makes the archive more accessible and equitable. More Kānaka Maoli live on the Mainland than on the Islands, and Jansen said that the archive hopes to help Native Hawaiians maintain connection to the ʻāina.
The archive “collects, preserves and makes available to the public” government records and special collections. Making records available to the public is at the core of Jansen’s role as State Archivist.
“We can protect by putting things in a vault and locking the vault door. We’ve preserved it. But our founding legislation is to preserve a range, describe and make accessible,” Jansen said. “It does not belong to us, it belongs to the people, so providing them access to their documentary heritage in a format than they can use, appreciate, enjoy is incredibly important to our overall goal and mission.”
He pointed to the Hawaiian proverb “I ka wā ma mua, i ka wā ma hope,” which means “the lessons of the past are the keys to the future.”
Jansen said, “He who controls the record controls history, controls knowledge, controls power, and as the public archives, we need to make sure everybody has that, that no one person controls it.”
Meet the State Archivist
Jansen doesn’t have a favorite item or collection at the archive but said that Queen Lili‘uokalani donating her manuscript collection — which includes her diaries, draft constitution, letters and more — to the Hawaiʻi State Archive inspires and drives him to do more to support the people of Hawaiʻi. The archive has digitized approximately 24,000 documents as part of the queen’s collection.
“She entrusted us with her most intimate words because she wanted us to share her voice with everybody for generations to come,” he said. “How can we pay back that faith and trust that she placed in us?”
The Hawaiʻi State Archives is also home to collections from Sanford B. Dole.
Jansen said that there’s still “societal angst regarding overthrow and annexation” and generational trauma.
“We have records dealing with that time period that need to be more globally understood, so when these discussions happen, everybody is starting from the same foundational knowledge of the words who were there shaping that history,” he said.
Jansen said that he took an atypical path to his career as an archivist. He originally planned to major in chemical engineering but changed his mind halfway through college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“I quickly learned that while I had a deep love of science and math, the concept of working in a small lab with two other people and no windows for the rest of my life really didn’t appeal to me,” he said.
He decided to get his bachelor’s in history instead. The university librarian asked him, “if you love history so much, why don’t you think about protecting it?”
Jansen went on to work in information management at Microsoft and UNOVA. He served as the Deputy State Archivist for the State of Washington, where he managed the Washington State Digital Archives while earning his Master of Science from Eastern Washington University in Business Administration and Computer Science, and later obtained his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.
Jansen moved to Hawaiʻi in 2013 to consult the Hawaiʻi State Archives on digitization and fell in love with the state and spirit of aloha. He stepped into the role of State Archivist in April 2016 and now oversees a team of about 20 staff.
“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” he said.
The people have kept Jansen passionate about his work, and he sees archives changing lives daily.
Jansen remembers an aunty in tears looking at the microfilm readers who had told him that she found the land record that her grandmother had signed, making it the first time she’d ever met her tutu.
“The impact that I see that these primary sources can make in (people’s) lives is absolutely irreplaceable,” he said.
Hawaiʻi State Archives has been upgrading its hardware to photography equipment over the last five years to improve digitization efforts. According to Jansen, the archive has digitized approximately 1% of their collection. As they make progress digitizing records, people continue to donate materials.
Hawaiʻi State Archives is developing artificial intelligence to increase accessibility of public hearings and aims to roll it out by the end of the year, Jansen said. The system will transcribe thousands of hours of hearings into a system researchers can search.
“We understand some of the fears and limitations and dangers of AI, so we are very cognizant of the fact that our language model that we are using, all of the AI tools are only on the corpus that we give it,” Jansen said. "It knows nothing about the grand universe beyond. It’s not finding anything other than those hearings and the documents we give it.”
Haley Lehman can be reached at haley@alohastatedaily.com.
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