Pioneering the Cataloging of Hawaiian Language: A Trailblazer’s Journey
Horie is a 1981 graduate of the Library and Information Science Program, then known as the Graduate School of Library Studies (GSLS). Horie entered the Library Studies Master’s program after earning a Bachelor’s of Arts in Hawaiian Studies in 1979. At the time, there was no Department of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), so Horie designed her own degree program within the Liberal Studies Department. Horie also earned a minor in Art History-Visual Design with a focus on traditional Hawaiian tattooing.
Horie was encouraged to pursue a graduate education in Library Studies by her mentor and former supervisor, Abraham Piʻianaiʻa, the inaugural director of the Hawaiian Studies Program at UHM. After starting her career at the East-West Center and Bishop Museum Libraries, she was able to finally get her dream position at the largest collection of Hawaiian language materials at UHM. There she was able to advance the library’s work in creating subject headings and other access points that would allow students, faculty, and the wider community to access materials, especially those in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. To make that happen, she taught herself programming and mastered a number of software programs so that she could share her work with librarians all over the world. Thanks to her, many Hawaiian library materials are accessible to future generations online and are not hidden away in stacks. She also was a pioneering contributor to Ulukau, “the Hawaiian Electronic Library, which is among the most frequently used resources for Hawaiian language and research. In our professional community, she is perhaps the most remembered for convincing the Library of Congress to modify its problematic Subject heading “Hawaii–History–Revolution of 1893” to the more accurate “Hawaii—History—Overthrow of the Monarchy, 1893.” She also became a celebrated mentor to Kanaka Maoli librarians and librarians and archivists in the Pacific. People wanting to learn more about this inspiring librarian might want to check out Shaindlin’s (2018) UHM thesis “Ruth Horie: An Oral History Biography and Feminist Analysis.”
Ruth Horie retired as a catalog librarian from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She holds a B.A. in Hawaiian Studies, a M.L.S. in Library Studies, and a M.A. in Linguistics. Her educational background, Hawaiian language skills, and work experience qualify her to take on the task of cataloging the Hawaiian language materials of the provincial archives. Ruth is a former president of the Hawaiʻi Library Association, and has professional memberships in Online Audiovisual Catalogers and Pacific Islands Association of Libraries, Archives and Museums. She received the Hawaiʻi Library Association Notable Member Award in 2010.