I sought ways to increase my proficiency in the Hawaiian language as a third-year student in the UH-Hilo language immersion program. Fellow student Kehaulani Tolentino (who graduated from the Hawaiian Studies program and became a teacher on the Island of Hawai'i) suggested I work on the Hawaiian epic story Laʻieikawai, Ka Hiwahiwa o Paliuli, Kawahineokaliʻulā. This old tale was serialized in 19th century Hawaiian language newspapers by S. N. Haleʻole.

Kehau suggested I insert the ʻokina and kahakō (the glottal and macron) diacriticals throughout the 34 chapter story as an reading aid for Hawaiian students in the state's Hawaiian language immersion schools. To my knowledge, this version was only used in immersion environments. I used Martha Beckwith's text to do the inputting and later compared it to the version by Haleʻole for accuracy. The story is epic, and very popular, hence quite a bit of attention has been given to it in recent years after my work originally appeared. There are several editions of Laʻieikawai now on the Web, and several physical book editions have been published. However, mine was the first published work to include the diacritical characters.

Here is the story of Laʻieikawai without the diacritical marks parked on the Ka Paa Moolelo site that I built some time ago.

In the mid-1990's, I attended the Midwinter and Annual conferences of the American Library Association. I served on several committees in the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL): Instruction Section, Teaching Methods Committee. I and several others spent two years years gathering successful active learning strategies our colleagues used in their library instruction programs across the country and published it as:

Designs for Active Learning, A Sourcebook of Classroom Strategies for Information Education, edited by Gail Gradowski, Loanne Snavely, and Paula Dempsey; production editor, Kevin M. Roddy; with the Teaching Methods Committee, Instruction Section, Association of College & Research Libraries. Chicago: American Library Association, 1998. 232p.