Yesterday, I was looking for an article that was cited in something I was reading. The citation was for an article on the planting of kalo and the selling of poi and was to be found in Aloha Aina, 5/27/1916.

I of course immediately went online—not there. Then I went to the microfilms—not there. My first instinct was that the citation was wrong. However, there would have been an issue published on that date…

So as a last resort, I went back to the originals. Come to find out, there are in just that year, seven issues that are extant that are not available online or on microfilm…

I am not sure why there isn’t a bigger push to reshoot all of the newspapers so that every word on every page is legible, and so that every page that is still in existence is made easily available online. Sure, the economy is not the best, but if we want to understand the present, and to make better decisions to shape the future, we need to understand the past; not the past as told by those from the outside looking in, but by those living it.