Patricia Polansky receives Nina Horio Award

UH Mānoa’s longest-serving librarian celebrated for her 56 years—and counting—at Hamilton

To say that Russian bibliographer Patricia Polansky has made quite a name for herself over the course of her 56-year career curating the Russia Collection at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Hamilton Library is an understatement.

“People in Russia, they know the name Pat Polansky very well,” said Amir Khisamutdinov, a historian at Far Eastern State University and senior library specialist at Far Eastern Branch Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok.

“Everybody knows ‘Shakespeare.’ Everybody knows ‘Polansky,’ if you’re talking about Russian books published in Asia/Pacific Rim.”

University Librarian Clem Guthro recognizes what a treasure Polansky is to Hamilton.

“Pat is probably the most well-known Russian bibliographer in North America, and during her long and storied career, she has built a world-renowned collection focusing on the Asian half of Russia, including Russia’s influence in Hawai‘i,” he said.

“She has, without a doubt, influenced scores of Russian studies students, faculty and scholars from around the world.”

Polansky, who lights up when she talks about the Russia Collection, was recognized by her colleagues with the Nina D.P. Horio Excellence in Librarianship Award on Aug. 13. See her tribute video here.

“The award is given in recognition of substantial contributions to the work of Hamilton Library and the community it serves,” Guthro said. “It is certainly a fitting honor for Hamilton’s longest-serving librarian.”

A rare and prestigious honor, the Nina Horio Award has only been given seven times before in its 32 year existence, and the last time was in 2021. Its namesake – and first recipient – was a science and technology librarian at Hamilton Library from 1980-1993, who is credited with establishing a separate faculty classification for UH librarians.

“That has been her lasting legacy,” said Polansky, who was one of the award’s co-founders.

Polansky and former Hamilton librarian Karen Peacock, who curated the library’s Pacific Collection, created the award in 1993 to honor their dear friend and colleague, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“We were just like the troika – we couldn’t be separated, and we did tons of things together,” she said.

Polansky’s colleagues in the Asia Collection nominated her earlier this year for the honor, which was approved by the Library Faculty Senate.

“I don’t feel quite worthy to have this award,” Polansky said, “but I’m pleased and happy.”

“She is undeniably a most deserving recipient of this award,” said Monica Ghosh, Chair of the Asia Collection and South Asia Studies Librarian.

“Her five-decade career is a model of excellence, marked by distinguished scholarship, visionary collection development, and steadfast service to the library profession,” Ghosh said. “It is a genuine honor and a privilege to have her as a colleague.”

Making connections to build a collection

The first 20 years of Polansky’s career were during the Cold War, which ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A colorful stained-glass window next to her bright yellow office door was installed that year, months before the fateful event. The top pane depicts the famous onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow; a shelf of books stands in the bottom pane. The word “ПРИВЕТ” means “hello” in Russian.

Polansky recalls telling her sister, who made the window for her, not to use the Soviet hammer and sickle symbol because of the USSR’s impending demise. However, her sister had already included it in quite a symbolic – if inadvertent – way: she had put it on the spine of a book in the composition that’s noticeably tipped over from the upright books on either side. It would represent a turning point not only in the world order, but in Polansky’s career.

“The big event during my time here was the collapse of the Soviet Union – that really turned everything upside down. We had to start collecting in a much different way than we had before,” she remembered.

During the Cold War, Polansky had limited opportunities for procuring Russian resources. In 1977, she was the first U.S. librarian to receive a travel grant from the International Relations Exchanges Board (IREX), and her charge from the university librarian at the time was: “Do something useful for Hawai‘i.”

She took it to heart. She went to Leningrad in hopes of finding and cataloging where materials were located in Soviet archives about Hawai‘i and the Pacific. Her Soviet adviser told her that was not possible: that information was kept in the naval archives, which was off-limits to foreigners. So she compiled a bibliography of all the sources she could find elsewhere about Hawai‘i and the Pacific.

“It was a 6-month program, and when I left I think I had about 3,000 items I had identified. So it was useful,” she said.

She received seven more IREX travel grants to visit Russia, where she developed relationships with Soviet scholars, who, in exchange, would travel to Hawai‘i and other U.S. universities.

“It was extremely important because it meant we got to acquire materials that were not available in the regular market – not through the library exchanges or what few book dealers there were,” she said.

“In the Soviet era, we relied heavily on book exchanges with Soviet libraries. But that ceased after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And then new book dealers arose in the West that we could begin buying from.” They would become essential to building the collection.

Another change was that new travel opportunities became available. Polansky began traveling to the Russian Far East and Siberia to acquire materials for the library, sometimes on her own dime.

“Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I could not travel to the Russian Far East. After that, I traveled only to the Far East.”

A ‘priceless’ resource

Polansky describes two main areas of Hamilton Library’s Russia Collection. One is the general collection, which includes resources on general topics about Russian history, humanities and social sciences – language, literature, geography, religion, philosophy, education, to name a few.

The other has a more specific focus. “Our strength, I feel, has always been Russia in Asia and the Pacific – we focus on that,” said Polansky. “So we have a lot of very unique materials here that aren’t held by any other libraries.”

She carefully opens one such item: a light brown silk brocade-bound book with ivory clips. It’s in Russian and was printed in 1938 in Tianjin, China. She says it’s rare because its cover has photographs and inscriptions from the authors, who were Russian émigrés to China, which none of the other known copies has.

Khisamutdinov has only one word for Hamilton’s Russia Collection: “Priceless.”

“Some of the books Hamilton Library has are not existent in any collection in the world,” he said. “It’s maybe one copy, which means in Hamilton Library, in Hawai‘i, on O‘ahu.”

Khisamutdinov, who has collaborated with Polansky over the years to catalog the collection in the Russian language, said, “When I first saw Pat’s collection, I said, ‘Oh, it’s really wonderful. It’s really good, and I would like to share that knowledge, that collection with my Russian colleagues.’”

They did just that with their catalog, which was printed by the Russian National Library in Moscow and now consists of four volumes. “It’s a tradition in libraries – when you have a collection, you need to publish a catalog,” Khisamutdinov said.

In addition to its immeasurable value to Russian scholars, the collection features direct connections with Hawai‘i. In their nomination, Polansky’s colleagues in the library’s Asia Collection said her “visionary approach to collection development has resulted in an unparalleled repository of Russian and Northeast Russian materials, including rare resources on the Russian émigré community in Hawai‘i.”

“We’re really much better known nationally and internationally than we are here locally,” Polansky said. “But, I think these things sometimes go in cycles, and I’m hoping in the future our Russian program will maybe come back up again like it was before, and there will be materials here for people to use.”

With no plans to retire, Polansky intends to continue cultivating the priceless collection to which she has devoted her illustrious career at Hamilton Library.