Alele Museum & Public Library is the national museum and the national archive of the Marshall Islands. It also hosts the only public library in the country.

The idea of a museum for the Marshall Islands was first developed in 1968 with the Marshall Islands Museum Committee meeting initially of 8 February that year.^[1] On 25 March 1970, a charter was incorporated for a Marshall Islands Museum. It was decided that the museum and library would share a purpose-built premises and the building was completed in 1974.^[2]

As of 2020, the organisation had ten staff.^[3] The alele means bag or basket in Marshallese, and represents a particular receptacle in which a family's valuables would have traditionally been kept.^[4]

The museum opened in 1981 and has been in continuous operation since then, apart from between 2011 and 2013.^[3] The museum is on the ground floor of the building and has exhibits across three rooms. Displays focus on Marshallese culture, including traditional navigation, warfare, tools, crafts and jewellery.^[5] Due to a lack of space, the museum is unable to display the large items from its textile collection, in particular its nieded which are traditional women's cloths.^[3]

The museum also organisations the Manit Day celebrations, which encourages the celebration of Marshallese culture.^[3]

A major aspect of the museum's public engagement work is its regular radio program which has been running since the 1980s and connects people in the outer islands in particular to the work of the museum.^[2][3]

The library is located on the second floor of the building; it has a dedicated area for children's literature, as well as a Pacific section.^[5] The library has a strong research collection that focuses on the Marshall Islands. It also supports computer literacy, through learning programmes.^[3]

In the 1980s, under a government mandate, the National Archives were located at Alele Museum.^[3] The archive has a large microfilm collection.^[3] The archive also has an internationally significant collection of video recordings of islands life from the 1980s to the 2000s. The archive began a digitisation project in 2017.^[3]

The Joachim de Brum photographic collection and archive is also on loan to the organisation.^[17] This collection consists of the papers and glass plate negatives belonging to the de Brum family, who are descended from Jose de Brum, one of the first Portuguese settlers and his wife, Likemeto, the daughter of the former Irooj of Likiep. This archive provides a unique insight into Marshallese life in the nineteenth century.^[3]

• Gerald R. Knight^[1]
• Melvin Majmeto^[5]
• Wisse Amram^[3]
• Bernice Joash^[18][7]