The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hamilton Library received two rare Japanese scrolls from Deborah Rudolf, wife of the late John Harvard Hawley. The scrolls, entitled 鯨魚覧笑録 (Geigyoran shoroku), were created in 1819 and depict the entire process of whalehunting during Japan’s Edo period (1600–1868). The scrolls are hand-painted and over 400 inches long. Scrolls with the same title, but less colorful, are housed in the Tokyo National Museum.
The majority of the items are in Japanese, but there are also materials in various European languages, Chinese and Ryukyuan language (Uchināguchi). The collections are in different formats such as western binding, Japanese traditional binding books, maps, scrolls, wood-block prints and hand-written manuscripts.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
