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Bishop Museum Publications

Bishop Museum issued its first publication in 1892-1893 in the form of a preliminary catalog of the Museum's collections. It started a series termed Special Publications, which had no fixed page size. In 1897, the series of Occasional Papers in octavo size was begun with an account of the Director's tour round the world to visit museums for the examination of artifacts from the Pacific area. The Director's annual reports were printed as Occasional Papers, and many of them contained ethnological articles by J. F. G. Stokes as well as illustrations of newly acquired artifacts. In 1898, the Memoir series in quarto size was started, with the Director's study on Hawaiian featherwork. The Memoirs were used for long papers, such as Fornander's collection of Hawaiian antiquities and folklore and Brigham's studies on the Hawaiian collections in the Museum. The Museum had its own printing press and printer to deal with approved manuscripts.

After 1920, the great increase in the number of manuscripts in ethnology and the natural sciences as a result of the Bayard Dominick and other expeditions, led to the abandonment of printing by the Museum and a contract with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin to print the Museum publications. The Occasional Papers in octavo were continued for papers of less than 50 printed pages. They were particularly useful for short taxonomic papers describing new species which were given priority to insure quick publication and protect an author's research work from being superseded elsewhere by quicker publication of later work. The Memoir, quarto size, was found to be inconvenient for the longer manuscripts, so a Bulletin series in royal octavo was commenced in 1923. The Memoir series was reserved for reports on physical anthropology in which the wide tables of physical measurements were better accommodated by the larger pages. The Special Publication series is used occasionally for manuscripts which for reasons such as size, covers, and subject, are better dealt with outside of the Museum's regular series of Bulletins and Occasional Papers.

Bishop Museum, like other institutions, has adopted rules for the guidance of authors in preparing manuscripts for publication by the Museum. Though there may be more ways than one of preparing scientific papers, conformation to the style accepted by the publishing institution lessens the liability to mistakes by typist and printer and eases the work of the Museum's editor both in preparing manuscript for the printer and in reading proof. Anything that lessens labor also lessens the cost of publishing and funds are saved for further use. The experience of the Museum has been that scientists, no matter how eminent in their particular branch of research, are not immaculate with regard to their manuscripts. Inaccurate references are frequent and lead to the checking of every reference by the editor. Such a condition should not occur, yet its existence cannot be overlooked. It would be easier and less expensive for the Museum to publish manuscripts in the form in which they are submitted page 65and hold the author solely responsible for his errors of omission and commission. Yet, when errors are obvious, it seems more scientific to save science from itself, unpleasant and unappreciated though the task may be. The fact that errors have been overlooked in the past is no reason for our remaining short sighted in the present.

Up to August 31, 1945, the Museum had published 12 volumes of Memoirs containing 39 papers; 186 Bulletins; 18 volumes of Occasional Papers containing 238 papers; and 36 Special Publications. Of these, the 124 works in anthropology are as follows: Memoirs, 30 papers; Bulletins, 65; Occasional Papers, 16 distinct articles, but shorter articles are included in many of the Director's Reports; Special Publications, 13.

In the lists of literature which follow, the general literature and the literature of the individual islands, the Museum publications are separate.