Gallery: Archival Projects
Volcano House Register
CSAV is digitally archiving the Volcano House Register (1865 - 1939) with the assistance of UH-Hilo Geology Professor Steve Lundblad and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Visitors to the Volcano House recorded their observations and made drawings of volcanic activity; since Jaggar did not arrive until the early 1900's, the written record of the VHR is invaluable to scientists looking for clues to early behavior of Kilauea Volcano. Download a transcript of the Volcano House Register covering 1865 - 1922; watermarked digital images are also available.
Darcy Bevens (left) and Tracy Lacqua carefully prepare a volume of the Volcano House Register for photographing, in the Archives Room of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. A few sample pages are shown below.
Frank S. Dodge drew a map in the Volcano House Register, of Kilauea summit and Halemaumau, in August 1892
Many drawings in the Volcano House Register were of people who had come from far away to see the lava
A typical page from the Volcano House Register includes a description of the traveler's experiences
Robert W. Decker Slide Collection
Over the course of his illustrious career, Robert W. Decker amassed a collection of 30,000 slide photographs. Some were taken during his travels to Indonesia and Latin America, but many of the slides are duplicates which he obtained from colleagues such as the Kraffts, as well as NPS and USGS personnel. This collection has been donated to CSAV to digitally archive, complete with Meta Data, before handing the slides (and digital copies) over to the Smithsonian for permanent archival preservation. A limited number of the digital images will eventually be available for public downloading, as many are Public Domain. But others are copyright, such as those of the Kraffts, and cannot be used without permission.
Each slide is carefully and sequentially numbered; a few of Katia's are shown.
The slides are scanned with a Nikon Cool Scan, which allows the technician to work on another project simultaneously, as it accepts up to 50 slides in a stack. Each slide is saved as a TIFF with 65 MB at 8-bit depth. Samples are shown below.
In November 1975, an earthquake of M 7.2 damaged roads on the Big Island
Firemen attempt to cool down a molten lava flow that is crossing the road
A lake of lava in Halemaumau sent spatter into the air on 11/5/1967
In August 1971, visitors enjoyed seeing fountains of lava in Kilauea Caldera
A hornito (rootless vent over a lava lake or flow) in Alae Crater, 5/20/1970
Lava pours into Keanakakoi pit crater, 7/19/1974
A vehicle was destroyed by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens
Tephra from the 1959 Kilauea Iki eruption buried the road and defoliated ohia trees
A lava flow from Puu Oo on 1/7/1983 buried a section of forest; tree molds show the former lava height