RENE HEYUM
1916 - 2004

We have received a nomination for René Heyum, builder of the famous Pacific Collection at the University of Hawai'i's Hamilton Library. She began her career as a librarian in France. While working for the library of the Musée de l'Homme, she was for many years the compiler of the Bibliographie de l'Océante, which appeared in issues of the Journal de la Soczété des Océarustes. In 1969, Ms. Heyum became curator of the University of Hawai'i's Pacific Collection. In this capacity, she worked indefatigably to build the collection, acquiring difficult-to-obtain materials from Pacific Island governments and colonial administrations, as well as published and manuscript materials on the Pacific. As curator at the University of Hawai'i, she strongly believed that her mission was to make available to Pacific Islanders what had been written about their cultures, and to encourage them to add their own voice. She also went out of her way to put scholars with like interests in contact with one another. By the time she retired from the curatorship in 1987, the collection had become the major locus of library and archival research for the Pacific, surpassing in this respect older collections on the mainland and in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

(January 1993 Newsletter)