Developing Guampedia: Guam’s Online Encyclopedia

In 2002 Jillette Leon Guerrero, then the executive director of the Guam Humanities Council, Dr. Nicholas Goetzfridt, a UOG reference librarian and member of the GHC board who first headed the Guam online encyclopedia project, and I, the newly hired managing editor, began creating Guampedia by making a list.

The year before Goetzfridt and Leon Guerrero wrote a successful grant to the National Endowment for the Humanities to plan for a long term Council project to create an on line encyclopedia about Guam. The Council hired me to be the manager of what was eventually to be known as Guampedia, Guam’s Online Encyclopedia.

The first questions we tackled were how do you show the beauty of Guam, its long and complex history, the Chamorro people, and everyone else who makes the island their home (including those pesky brown tree snakes) and make it come alive on the internet? We wanted our online encyclopedia to be a community project with lots of involvement with every bit of information peer reviewed, fact checked and copy edited for a scholarly resource that was freely accessible and easily searched.

Filming Puntan and Fu'una: The Guampedia crew employ their family and friends to film "I Tinituhan: Puntan and Fu'una", 2007.

We began by making lists. Ancient Guam, Chamorro Culture, Economics, Natural Resources, Politics, Religion and Wars were some of the subjects we listed. Others, such as Villages, Health, Education, Sports and Justice were added too. We wanted to cover everything about Guam from ancient history to contemporary times.

Then we looked for people to help us – experts in their field who could guide the development of the material in each section. Dr. Judy Flores agreed to help with the Art section, Father Eric Forbes with the Religion section, and so on. Many of those who agreed to help were academics though others had traditional knowledge – we wanted everyone to be involved as this was to be a community project – made by the people, for the people!

Next we created systems of doing our work and standards for the material that would be in Guampedia. We looked at other online scholarly projects though there weren’t many at the time. Guampedia was only the fifth online state encyclopedia created in the nation.

Besides entries we wanted to have lots of photographs, both historic and contemporary. We wanted video and audio too. Later we decided to add a bibliography of Guam books and articles, as well as a Chamorro dictionary (still in progress).

We hired a software developer to create a custom-made content management system that would be the backend of Guampedia.

About six months into the project, staff (at the time it was Jillette, myself, Lacee Martinez and Marguerite Saussotte) spent time developing a strategic plan for Guampedia as well as a mission statement:

“We believe that the future of our island is dependent upon an informed, educated citizenry. Scarce resources result in limited opportunities to learn and understand about Guam’s unique history, culture, environment and present-day society. Guampedia exists to provide a comprehensive, accessible quality resource about Guam that will increase opportunities for the enlightenment of our people, allowing us to chart our destiny.”

Our target audiences, we determined, were students and teachers, Chamorros and other former residents who live off-island, our island’s visitors (both tourists and the military community), the media, the federal government and potential businesses for Guam.

Moving from planning to doing

Once the planning was done we applied for and received a grant in 2005 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop Guampedia. Various people worked on the project with me but ultimately Tanya Mendiola and Nathalie Pereda became the assignment editor and media archivists, respectively, as earlier team members left. Dr. Kimberlee Kihleng became the executive director of the Council the year we began creating the content for Guampedia, in 2005. Rita Nauta had led our community education effort for a year in 2007.

We used our collective knowledge of the community to host valuable planning meetings about the project with government, religious and civic groups. Key government leaders also met with us to talk about helping to create Guampedia, including the Guam Museum, Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam, the justices from the Unified Court System, Chamorro Affairs, Guam Preservation Trust, Park’s and Recreation’s Historic Preservation Division, and the Guam Public Library.

These meetings revealed wide support of the project, and that a resource such as Guampedia was desperately needed.

Chamorros who live away from Guam also contacted us by the dozens offering their help to develop this resource. They spoke about the great need for an online resource and their excitement at the quality of the work that will become available to them and their children who live away from their homeland.

Meetings were also held with Navy and Air Force representatives. They were delighted to learn about the development of a resource such as Guampedia. Guampedia will be a resource they can offer to service members and their families to learn about Guam before they move here in order to better familiarize them with the island’s history, Chamorro culture and contemporary Guam.

Surfer Interviews:  Guampedia writer Doug Plate, third from left, conducting an interview with some of Guam's first surfers at Jeff's Pirate Cove, 2005.
In addition to the time spent on developing the software, working on a strategic plan, fund raising and spreading the word in the community about Guampedia, more than 535 articles have been developed, including 10 interpretive essays by well known scholars of Guam history. About 7,000 historic photographs and 280 videos about Guam were acquired. About 100 people have written, edited or peer reviewed entries for Guampedia, making it a true community project. To date, only about one-third of the content is complete and posted, with another 800 entries still to be written and edited.

Major funding has come from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Guam Preservation Trust and Office of Insular Affairs at the Department of the Interior. Smaller grants were awarded from the Alexander Baldwin Foundation, the Guam Women’s Club and the Naval Officer’s Spouses Club. A golf fundraiser also brought in much needed funds.

Through the feedback tool at the bottom of each page in Guampedia, we find that we are most surely reaching our target audiences from all over the world. Our mascot and logo is Chalani, a green sea turtle. Turtles live long lives, travel about but always come home to nest. Chalani is the Chamorro term for path or road to knowing.

In January we arrive at the 1 million dollars raised mark, just about all which has been already been spent creating the site. We need much more help! People who know about a particular part of Guam’s history are encouraged to join us in sharing their knowledge and invited to contact us and contribute.

The nature of the Guampedia project is perhaps unlike any other.  Guam’s social dynamics are grounded in the impact of centuries of cross-cultural interaction, which resulted in an island people who struggle to define and express their heritage and identity.

After six and a half years of working to create Guampedia, we even more firmly believe that it will serve as a positive force for better understanding and appreciating the complex history of the island and its people and the ways in which they have accommodated and adapted to centuries of outside forces, yet still maintain our sense of culture, identity and place.