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Hawaiian Imprint Collection: A Resource Guide

Search Strategies

There are several ways for researchers to locate items in the Hawaiian Imprint Collection at the Library of Congress, ranging from searching the online catalog to manual card catalogs to published bibliographies. The sections below provide search strategies for each tool.

Library of Congress Online Catalog

Researchers can find items in the collection by searching "Hawaiian Imprint Collection" as a phrase in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Also be sure to search terms like "Hawaii" and "Honolulu" to find items that are held in other parts of the Library's collections.

The phrase “Request in: Rare Book/Special Collections Reading Room” appears at the bottom of online records for rare books.

Screenshot from the Library of Congress Online Catalog

The full bibliographic description for each title in the Hawaiian Imprint Collection also includes references to the book in two significant bibliographies of Hawaiiana, both of which are available in the Rare Book Reading Room Reference Collection.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

The Card Catalog

Special card files in the reading room still provide valuable access information for collections that have not been cataloged and for cataloged collections for which there are no records online. Other special files have provenance, inscription, and binding information on books from many collections.

The division's own dictionary catalog contains 650,000 cards that provide access to almost the whole of the division's collections by author or other form of main entry and, in some instances, by subject and title also. The card file was closed in 1991 and no cards have been added since then. It remains available in the reading room for access to those collections whose records are not yet online.

Other Resources

There is no single catalog that contains records for all items held in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Some items are found only in published bibliographies or divisional finding aids. The staff in the Division can help locate and use these additional resources.