Web Resources at Hawai`i Residents’ Fingertips

A few years ago, Diane Nakashima’s father began going in and out of the hospital due to health complications related to diabetes.  Because her parents live on the Big Island while she resides on O`ahu, Nakashima had to call state agencies to find out what services were available for elderly care.

“When I went to the state sites or I called the state departments, they’d say ‘It’s the county’s [job],’ or ‘We heard about that but we don’t know where you can get it from,’” Nakashima told journalism students Wednesday, Oct. 19.  The lack of information on resources in state and local agencies inspired Nakashima to create a “web-based repository” called “Ka'analike Mana'o (Sharing of Ideas).” 

“This compilation is a link for Hawai'i residents to resources that are offered by officials,” Nakashima states on her homepage.  “In the last few years, the state and local governments have put information online, but there is an overload of resources in a hodge-podge fashion. The attitude is to keep on adding information, but who manages it? We have all these resources on-line, but how do we find it?  I would like a comprehensive website that offers state, local, federal, and nonprofit services to the different agencies.” 

Topics found on her website are:

• Arts
• Census Data
• Education
• Family (infant, children, teenagers, adults, elderly)
• Health
• Law
• Medicine
• Natural Disasters
• Politics and Policy
• Recreation

Each topic includes a one-sentence description and a stand-alone page link to its homepage. The complete list of topics can be found at www.soc.hawaii.edu/dianena.

Nakashima’s website is modeled after the PowerReporting webpage – found at http:www.powerreporting.com – created by investigative reporter Bill Dedman of the Boston Globe.  “[Dedman] used to work with AP and also with the Atlantic Constitution, where he won the Pulitzer for finding out the discrimination in home loans,” Beverly Keever, a journalism professor at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa, added.  “And now he’s developed this, which is a major resource for all journalists nationally.”  Nakashima then localized her website to Hawai`i, focusing more on the general public than on journalists.

“I didn’t want to make it really busy,” Nakashima said, adding.  “I’m focusing it on the everyday guy.”  If the item is really wordy, then they’re going to get turned off by the second sentence, she explained, saying, “I wanted it short and simple and to the point.”

In addition to making the page layouts simple, Nakashima decided to make the website’s graphic design distinctly Hawaiian.  Different shades of brown comprise the sidebar and title font colors.  Each topic section is accompanied by a petroglyph that Nakamura drew from photographs.  An `olelo no`eau, or Hawaiian proverb, serves as a header for each topic section.

Throughout her speech, Nakashima gave the journalism majors advice on how to create a website and how to use her website as a research tool.  As an activity, the class went to the Hawai`i State Judiciary’s website through the “Courts” topic on Ka`analike Mana`o and looked up a name in the court’s records.   

Leo de Azambuja, one of the journalism students present at the speech, said “It’s always a problem to find information on the net that’s just about Hawai`i.  This site is cool because it makes the search much easier.”

Nakashima graduated from UHM in 1981 with a bachelor’s of arts degree in graphic design.  She later became interested in journalism when she found herself editing copies for brochures and reports that did not read correctly.  When she began working at UHM as the catalog coordinator, Nakashima took journalism courses to learn how to edit better.  Nakashima graduated with a master’s degree in communications in spring 2005 and her website fulfilled a practicum requirement.