The Challenges of Digital Archiving in Finland
Lauri Harvilahti

By 2016, the Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society will be united with the Literary Archives of the Society in order to form a strong central archive for oral and written cultural heritage records in Finland. The renewal can be regarded as part of answering to the challenges of the Digital Age. We are, in a project led by the National Archives, creating a new archival information system that will be compatible with a number of systems, including the now planned new archival rules of description and cataloguing. We will also have common acquisition and collecting policy. The new archival thinking has at least following tasks:

• Born digital materials as a challenge for archiving
• Internet and Social Media as a platform for collecting folkloric data and fieldwork.
• New international systems of archival description and cataloquing (International Council of Archives, ICA).
• Ontologies: automatic annotation, geographical ontologies, authority databases/ontologies, etc.
• Interoperability (standards, metadata formats and models)
• Creating an international network of cultural archives (Example: International Society for Ethnology and Folklore SIEF: http://www.siefhome.org/wg/arch/index.shtml )

The Finnish National Digital Library is a major project that will encompass archives, libraries and museum sector in Finland. The National Digital Library is the Ministry of Education and Culture’s project that will create a unified structure for contents and services with the purpose of promoting the availability of digital information resources of archives, libraries and museums, and developing the long-term preservation of digital cultural heritage materials.

About the author

Lauri Harvilahti, adjunct professor (docent), director of the Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society, has as a result of fieldwork carried out over twenty years become familiar with a number of traditional cultures. His theoretical interests lie with the ethnocultural processes and ethnic identity, and research on oral and literary epics, computer folkloristics, and at present especially theory and practice of archiving oral tradition. He has directed a CO-REACH project between Academy of Finland and Institute of Ethnic Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences entitled Documentation and Archiving of Oral Tradition: Researches and Interdisciplinary Approaches (2009 - 2011), and he is currently leading the digital archive projects of the Finnish Literature Society's Folklore Archives. He has written four monographs (in Finnish, English and Russian), a number of edited volumes and over eighty academic articles, especially in the field of oral epics. His publications in English include The Holy Mountain: Studies on Upper Altay Oral Poetry.

Reflections on the Construction of The Chinese Oral Literature Heritage Database
Hou Yangjun

In 1984, the Ministry of Culture, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association co-sponsored a national survey of Chinese folk literature and a series called The Collection of Chinese Folktales, The Collection of Chinese Ballads, and The Collection of Chinese Proverbs. The survey was a thorough one, which covers oral literature of every ethnic group from regions across China. As a result, a huge amount of first-hand oral literary materials were collected. According to an incomplete statistics, from 1984 to 1999, the hundreds of thousands of cultural workers conducted fieldwork to collect materials, which results in: over 2 million people involved in the survey, about 1.84 million folktales, 3.02 million ballads, and 4.78 million proverbs collected in total. By 2009, the provincial volumes of the “Three Complete Collections” were published: 90 volumes and 120 million words. There were over 4,000 volumes of prefecture and county levels were published (internal publication only), and the total amount of words exceeded 4 billion. Since 2011, Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association has organized relevant experts to digitize and classify Chinese oral literary materials. After three years’ hard work, the objective of the first phase of Chinese Oral Literary Heritage Digitization Project was successfully completed. 4,905 books on oral literature, namely 887.8 million words, are digitized into three formats: TIF, PDF and TXT. The present paper plans to review the pros and cons of this process, and pays attention to the issue of copyright.

About the author

Hou Yangjun, Ph. D in history, now serves as the professor of editorship, the director at the Department of Academic Research of Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society, as well as the editorial member of Forum on Folk Culture (a journal). Dr. Hou has published five books including Study of Archaeological Discoveries and Origin of the Xia and Shang Dynasties, Historical Truth and Cultural Reflections, and etc. He has released over 80 articles from newspapers or journals such as People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, Folklore Studies, Forum of Folk Culture and etc. He has received over 30 book awards at the national and provincial levels, including the Fourth and Fifth National Book Award, the Second Chinese Superior Publication Award, and the Nomination Award of the Third Chinese Superior Publication Award. In recent years, as a major member, Dr. Hou has participated in the digitization project of oral literary heritage in China. The project seeks to, with modern advanced technologies, digitize the materials collected in the national survey of oral literature by Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society during the past decades. The purpose of the project is to preserve the precious memory heritage for Chinese people.

Digitizing Documentation for the Mongolian Heroic Epics in China and Beyond
Chao Gejin, Bamo Qubumo, Bi Chuanlong, and Li Gang

Since 2010, the Center for Studies in China Ethnic Culture and Language which is affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has launched a national level project entitled Research on China Ethnic Language and Culture: Key Programme Commissioned by China National Fund for Social Sciences (RCELC Programme). Within its framework, a series of digital documentation plans for conserving and preserving oral and written materials related to oral traditional genres in multi-ethnic China has been carried out under the coordination and cooperation of experts in oral traditions, metadata standard experts and database experts. As a part of the ongoing project, the digitizing documentation of the Mongolian heroic epics directly depends on the voluminous textual materials co-complied by four Mongolian epic scholars who come from the IEL, and published between 2007 and 2010, namely Monggul Bagaturlig Tuuli-in Chigulgan (The Collection of the Mongolian Heroic Epics, Vol.1-4, 2007-2010, in Mongolian).
Most of the texts were published in China for the first time, including the precious manuscripts collected and recorded by a number of master scholars like G. Ramstedt (Finland), Bo. Ya. Vladimirtsov (Russia), Walther Heissig (Germany), and others. It has also laid a solid foundation of information science for the study of the Mongolian epic traditions. In addition, the texts included in the collection also reflect the three historical phases for recording Mongolian epic texts in the 20th century, which have essential value for the promotion of research work on history of scholarship in epic studies. While reflecting the concepts for studying Mongolian epics in China, the arrangement of the materials follows such principles as the regional and dialect distribution of the epics, the type of structure or story-pattern, and the relation between variant forms and relevant forms, and so on.
In order to further promote the academic discussions, exchanges and communications, and achievements spreading of the professional research of folklore, ethnic literature, and related parallel disciplines, the project team of China Epic Studies at the Institute of Ethnic Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences initiated the Digitizing Documentation Project for The Collection of the Mongolian Heroic Epics between 2010 and 2014. While presenting all 196 Mongolian epic texts in eEdition, it aims at integrating a database of epic texts in the structure of multi-dimension of descriptive datasets constructed by the project team. The readers/researchers can browse and retrieve information according to the Epic Zone, Epic Performer, Theme, Character-focus, Plot-type, Story-pattern, Collecting Place, Sub-genre, and Text-maker, as well as other possible extended dimensions that would be developed in the near future.
By introducing the present case of digitizing Mongolian heroic epic texts on such a scale, we may set forth a couple of questions to be discussed: How the integrated datasets could enrich or upgrade theoretical studies on diverse epic traditions? How the digitizing documentation could support more elaborate or more professional analysis of epic texts? How to promote the construction of the given datasets in international cooperation? How to bring a well-integration of professional power in digital process of documentation, including how to achieve the feasible collaboration between epic scholars, metadata standard experts, and database experts in the context of intra-regional, transnational, and even interdisciplinary discourse or dialogue? How to have these problems cracked, at least for the time being or at present stage, exactly, constitutes a pragmatic direction toward what we would like to discuss further more.

About the core team members

Chao Gejin (or Chogjin in Mongolian) was born in Inner Mongolia. He is Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Institute of Ethnic Literature (IEL), CASS. He also acts as President of the China Ethnic Literature Society (CELS, 2004- ), President of the China Folklore Society (CFS, 2010- ), President of Conseil international de la philosophie et des sciences humaines (CIPSH, 2014- ), and President of the International Society for Epic Studies (ISES, 2012- ), as well as editorial board member of several journals, including Oral Tradition (in the U.S.), Diogenes, Chinese Social Sciences amongst others. A literary critic focusing on modern Chinese literature as well as a folklorist working mainly on oral tradition (epic poetry in particular), he is the author of Kouchuan Shishi Shixue: Ranpile Jiangge'er Chengshi Jufa Yanjiu (Oral Poetics: Formulaic Diction of Arimpil's Janggar Singing, 2000), and Qiannian Juechang Yingxiong Ge (The Heroic Songs of the Past: Fieldnotes on the Oirat Mongolian Epic Tradition, 2004), as well as being the editor in chief of a series of research works on China's ethnic minority cultures. He is also the co-editor of Monggul Bagaturlig Tuuli-in Chigulgan (The Collection of the Mongolian Heroic Epics, Vol.1-4, 2007-2010, in Mongolian). He has extensively engaged in the field of Intangible Cultural Heritage at local, national and international levels, playing a consultative role in cultural policies; appointed by the Bureau of Intergovernmental Committee for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage, UNESCO (ITH/09/4.COM/CONF.209/14), he became ICH nomination file examiner in 2009.
Born in the Great Cold Mountain of Sichuan, China, BAMO Qubumo comes from Nuosu, a subgroup of the Yi people. She is Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Oral Traditions Research Center at the Institute of Ethnic Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is the author of The Golden-Eagle Spirit and the Poetic Soul: A Study of Ancient Poetics Recorded in the Yi's Scriptures (2000), Spirit Picture and Ghost Board: A Survey of Incantation Epos and Ritualized Paintings in Nuosu Yi Area (2004), plus more than 90 articles. Her new book is in press, titled Verbal Dueling and Epic Performance, a revised edition of her dissertation (2003) which was based on a target field study carried out in her hometown. Bamo also acts as Deputy President of the China Folklore Society, as well as an architect and webmaster of the China Ethnic Literature Network and China Folklore Network. She as expert-in-chief has been working on the CASS-level Project for creating and customizing a set of metadata standards specific to Archives of China Ethnic Minorities' Oral Traditions, a cross-multimedia database whose construction is currently underway.
BI Chuanlong defended his Ph.D dissertation on the digital preservation of traditional handcraft professions at Beijing Normal University in 2013. He is now a Post-Ph.D. Fellow at the Institute of Ethnic Literature (IEL), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), where he participates in a key project entitled "IEL Archives for Ethnic Minorities' Oral Traditions in China" which was launched in 2011. How to customize discipline-based metadata standards and facilitate the integration of different databases is also his research field.
LI Gang, the founder and Chief Engineer of Beijing Zhongyan Technology Co., Ltd., comes from the Mongols, acting as an executive member of China Folklore Society. Since 2004, he along with his technology team has deeply involved in building and updating the website of IEL, CASS, namely the China Ethnic Literature Network. He not only participates in IEL database construction, including the CASS-level Project for creating and customizing a set of metadata standards specific to Archives of China Ethnic Minorities' Oral Traditions, but also the technical majordomo of China Folklore Network (CFN).

Collaborative Strategies for Media Preservation at the Archives of Traditional Music
Alan R. Burdette

The Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University holds over 100,000 recordings dating from 1893 to the present. Holdings contain ethnographic and commercial recordings from all over the world and cover the fields of ethnomusicology, folklore, anthropology, linguistics, oral history, and popular music. Over the past seven years the archive has cultivated a collaborative environment for media preservation in an attempt to address the dual crisis of media degradation and format obsolescence. We are currently in the first year of large-scale media preservation with a shared, centralized media digitization facility on our campus. This presentation will give a brief background on the Archives of Traditional Music and the efforts that created the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative. I will also discuss the current state of these efforts and the changes that are now necessary at our archive. These include a migration of metadata and work relating to copyright and the ethics of online delivery of our recordings.

About the author

Alan R. Burdette is Director of the Archives of Traditional Music and the EVIA Digital Archive Project at Indiana University. He also served as a member of the Indiana University Media Preservation Task Force that worked to create a master plan for the campus’ half million time-based media holdings. His work in the past few years has focused on media archiving and on new initiatives that bring together the issues of digital research, archiving, and publishing. His research interests include American vernacular music and dance traditions, and performance studies. The EVIA Digital Archive Project is an effort to develop preservation strategies for ethnographic field video with support for intensive annotation, peer review, and online access. He is an adjunct professor in the Folklore and Ethnomusicology department at Indiana University and teaches courses in ethnic and regional musics of the United States.

On Typological Study and Database Construction of Mongolian Folktales
Siqinmenghe / Sechenmongke

The typological analysis of folktales is one of the frequently employed methods in the international academic circles. Meanwhile, it is also the basis of the study of folktales. The most important and basic work in the typological study of folktales, is to compile a scientific, comprehensive and representative type index. This present study mainly consists of the following two parts: (1) To set up the specific type index on the basis of regions, so as to formulate a worldwide book Type Index of Mongolian Folktale. The very basis of the type index is the “AT classification method”. Following the spirit of the AT classification method, a separate type coding and classification system suitable for Mongolian folktales would be established, called the “SM classification system”. (2) Based on the above research, taking the advantages of digital processing of computer technology---powerful functions, rapid retrieval and huge storage, we try to conduct digital processing of Mongolian folktales such as classification, induction, documentation, input, marking, analysis and search; try to design a comprehensive database compatible with three languages: English, Chinese and Mongolian, for the future resources sharing.
The Mongolian folktale database not only includes the textual information of folktales, but also media documents such as audios and videos of those folktales. While reading the textual information, readers can access to lively and interesting multi-media documents. They would be able to understand the geographical distribution of Mongolian folktales, the type analysis and motif analysis which are added to the map as illustrations. In addition, the plots and whole story of a folktale can also be displayed in a virtual form.

About the author

Siqinmenghe (Sechenmongke in Mongolian) is professor, PHD, and PHD advisor at the School of Mongolian Language and Culture, Northwest University for Nationalities. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Mongolian version of the Journal of the Northwest University for Nationalities; the evaluation expert of the National Social Sciences Foundation; the special member of the Sc.D Degree Review Board of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences; a member of the International Association for Mongol Studies; a member of the Asian Folklore Society; the director and academic member of the Chinese Society for Mongolian Literature. He was funded by the China Scholarship Council to conduct the senior visiting scholar programs in Mongolia and Russia. His main fields of research are folkloristic and folk literary studies of nomadic ethnic groups and the Mongols in northern China. He has published 15 monographs and textbooks, as well as over 80 papers at home and abroad. He has won several domestic and overseas awards of the provincial and ministerial levels or above.

The Digital Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage in China Memory Project
Tian Miao

China Memory Project is initiated with the purpose of preserving the memory resources in China, in order to build up memory repertoires characterized with important events and prominent people in contemporary China as its main contents. The digital safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage as the carrier of historical memory is a crucial task. It is also true for those old memories and techniques faced with the risk of extinction during the process of modernization. Since 2013, we have built a number of intangible cultural heritage repertoires, including “Chinese Lacquer Decoration,” “Silkworm Embroidery,” “Our Characters” and “Our Heroes,” in order to explore the methodology and technology of digital safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. The under-construction project: China Memory Safeguarding and Transmission Platform, tries to build up a system for the construction, collection and service of memory resources, and to set up corresponding regulations and referential standards for this field.

About the author

Tian Miao graduated from Beijing Film Academy with a master’s degree in directing. He is the director of many documentaries and feature films, including Long Yingtang, Grand Choir in a Small Stockaded Village, Spring Comes to Yuanshang Early, Echoes in the Western Regions, and etc. Since 2011, he has been engaged in the planning and designing of the China Memory Project and served as the person in charge. During the past four years, he conducted practices and explorations in the construction of memory resources such as the dictated documents and image documents. As the results, he presided and constructed the memory repertoire such as the Northeast United Army for Anti-Japanese Invasion, Chinese New Year Painting, Chinese Lacquer Decoration, Silkworm Embroidery, Our Characters, Expeditionary Forces to Burma, and Dictation from Scholars. Tian Miao is the co-author and co-editor of a series of books, including Oral History of Chinese Lacquer Decoration Bearers, My United Army Years: Oral History of Soldiers from the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, Memory in Chinese Lacquer, Memory in Silkworm and Our Characters.

Vernacular Authority and Digital Hybridity: Implications for Digitization, Acquisition, and Field Methods
Robert Glenn Howard

Beginning with the supposition that “tradition” has at least two aspects: its empirical verifiability and its vernacular assertion, this talk will assert that because these two aspects are not yoked together, researchers of oral expression can use the concept of “vernacular authority” to imagine what is deemed traditional in any specific communication event. From this “discursive” perspective, I suggest that an expression that appeals to “tradition” indicates an individual choice (consciously or not) to invoke (successfully or not) a shared conception of an authority that contrasts with those of institutions. Using this conception of performed vernacular authority, I posit that folklore researchers must account for the interpersonal, community, and societal politics at play in expressions presented as “traditional” when documenting and presenting the necessarily hybrid form of oral tradition in the 21^st century.

About the author

Robert Glenn Howard is Professor of Communication Arts, Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies, and Director of the Digital Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin -- Madison. Most broadly, his research seeks to uncover the possibilities and limits of empowerment through everyday expression in network communication technologies by focusing on the intersection of individual agency and participatory performance. He combines rhetorical theory, critical cultural theories, as well as theories of performance and performativity with network graphing methods as well as more traditional ethnography. Howard is the author of over 30 academic articles and has published four books including Digital Jesus (New York University Press, 2011) and Tradition in the 21st Century (Utah State University Press, 2013).

Standardization of Traditional Knowledge
Yue Gaofeng

Through introducing the background and current situation of standardization for traditional knowledge protection and management, the presentation puts forward objectives, principles and scope of national standardization for traditional knowledge in China, with an attempt to analyze and describe the contents of traditional knowledge standardization. Combined with the database construction for oral tradition at the Chinese Academy of social sciences, the author would like to discuss about some core issues in standardization for traditional knowledge database in the process of construction. Accordingly, some recommendations on how to promote the standardization for traditional knowledge management would be made in the last part.

About the author

Yue Gaofeng is an associate research fellow at High & New Technology and Information Institute of China National Institute of Standardization. His field of research mainly covers the standardization research of knowledge and innovation management, standards system, information organization and management, and intellectual support for the standardization committee on the national high and new technology industry standardization model zone. He is the member of the standardization committees such as SAC TC554 Knowledge Management, SAC/TC SAC/TC426 Intelligent Architecture and Digital Residential Area, SAC/TC526 Laboratory Instruments and Equipment, and the registered expert of ISO TC279 Innovative Management. He has published three books and completed more than 10 national standards. In addition, he presided and completed several research projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, and the Standardization Committee and etc. He also participated in the standard system or information standard projects of the State Administration of Taxation, the General Administration of Customs, the State Intellectual Property Office, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, and Kunlun Energy Company, and other organizations.

A Study of the Metadata Standards for Intangible Cultural Heritage
Sun Xiaofei

The Intangible cultural heritage is an important part of the world cultural heritage, and the crystallization of cultural tradition and human wisdom. To rescue and safeguard the intangible cultural heritage, the international societies conducted various surveys over the intangible cultural heritage within each country to collect data. They used digital technologies to produce different types of digital resources, and constructed relevant databases so that intangible cultural heritage can be preserved, protected, distributed and applied.
The materials of Intangible cultural heritage include various kinds of information generated during the process of survey, nomination and safeguarding. The types of the resources are highly diversified, including materials, manuscripts, pictures, videos, audios, objects and etc. Therefore, in constructing the information resource database of intangible cultural heritage, the design of a metadata standard system is fundamental. Taking the samples selected from the survey of the intangible cultural heritage conducted in a region as the object of research, the present paper tries to analyze the features of the described objects of metadata, and the functional demands of the standards of metadata. According to the practices of the survey and management of intangible cultural heritage, the top layer framework of the metadata conceptual model and standards is constructed. Based on this, a metadata regulation system is established, which consists of modules such as project entity metadata, institutional (individual) entity metadata, resource entity metadata, and laws and regulations entity metadata.

About the author

Sun Xiaofei presently serves as the director of the Resource Construction Department of Zhejiang University Library, focusing on the study of metadata standards and digital libraries. She has presided over and participated in the establishment of several metadata standards, such as the basic metadata standard for the CADAL project, the basic metadata standard for the digitized protection of cultural relic by the China Silk Museum, the basic metadata standard for the national project by Dunhuang Research Academy, and the basic metadata standard for the digitized protection of cultural relic by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

Directed Hypergraphs and their Expressiveness in Digital Folklore Archives: Experiences with the Practical Use of WossiDiA – The Digital Wossidlo Archive
Christoph Schmitt

The online publishing of archival material – not only of reference catalogues, but also of the sources themselves – is particularly challenging. This applies to the digital transformation of oral archives in conjunction with the idea to build a research instrument for international cooperation. It is evident that digital oral archives provide a high added value. They are an indispensable investment for preserving and mediating world’s immaterial cultural heritage.
However, digitally accessible corpora of folklore archives are still in their infancy. I will talk about the practical experiences we made within the WossiDiA-Project in collaboration with the Department of Computer Sciences. The project had been predominantly supported by the German Research Foundation. Since 2014 WossiDiA – The Digital Wossidlo Archive, presents the collection of Mecklenburg’s ethnographer Richard Wossidlo (1859-1939) on the worldwide web. It includes large quantities of handwritten notes and letters, which cover nearly all areas of folk culture (in particular folktales) and the lexis of the Low German language.
The Wossidlo Archive represents an idiosyncratic card file system, which includes different corpora, consisting of altogether almost two million documents. These documents are mostly excerpts which refer to different types of data (fieldnotes, letters, questionaires, and published sources). To map this special kind of networking, WossiDiA utilizes the hypergraph model and thus implements techniques which are state-of-the-art research in the semantic web community. In the Humanities hypergraph scenarios are almost unknown.

About the author

Christoph Schmitt, PhD, studied European Ethnology, History of Art, and German Literature at the University of Marburg, Germany. In 1992 he presented his doctoral thesis on “fairy tales in television”. He acquired first teaching experiences as an external lecturer at the University of Hamburg. From 1996 to 1998 he was employed as a scientific assistant at the “Institut für Volkskunde (Wossidlo-Archiv)” in Rostock, a former branch of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In 1999 he took over the lead of the folklore institute, which is now a department of the University of Rostock. His fields of research and teaching comprise: European Ethnology, folk narrative research, mass media research, ethnography/folklore of Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania, as well as research of customs and rituals. Since 2010 Dr. Schmitt heads the project WossiDiA – the Digital Wossidlo Archive. This project is funded by the German Research Foundation, and within the eHumanities context portrays a cooperation between the Wossidlo Archive and the Database Research Group at the Computer Science Department of Rostock’s University.

Construction of Digital Platform for Mongolian Oral Literature
Nashunwuritu / Nasen'urt

With the advent of the new information era characterized by mega data, cloud computing, mobile networks and social computing, the languages and cultures of ethnic minority groups are faced with great challenges. It becomes urgent that we have to develop the digital storage and the application platform in Mongolian oral literary studies. In the past decades, we have established database for Gesar, Jangar, "Mongolian folktales," "Mongolian ballads," "Mongolian proverbs," and "Mongolian riddles." Relevant software for searching was developed too. This paper tries to introduce the purpose, content, function and structure of these database and software. Through the introduction and exploration of the existing resources, we propose a basic idea to construct the structure of the digital platform in Mongolian oral literary studies.

About the author

Nashunwuritu (Nasen'urt in Mongolian) is a professor at College of Mongolian Studies, Inner Mongolia University. He serves as the PhD advisor, the standing member of Chinese Information Processing Society, the director of the Special Committee for the Information Construction of Ethnic Minority Language, vice chairman of China Mongolian Studies Society and the director of the Academic Committee, evaluation expert of National Social Science Foundation of China, the national candidate of the New Century Experts Project, and the selected expert with special allowance from the State Council.

On Possibilities for Digitizing Oral Tradition: Strategy, Practice and International Collaboration
Atsushi Higuchi

Since 2011 East Asian Folktales Database Committee has made database of 63,763 folktales(61,763 in Japan,1,055 in Korea, 465 in China) using FileMaker. Almost all of the Japanese data are audio data recorded for the last sixty years. Korean and Chinese data are based on written materials of In-Hak Choi and Wolfram Eberhard. This database enables us to browse related materials simply by putting entry words which extends to 43 kinds, for example name of teller, region, tale name, tale-type number, etc. By using ATU number and Regional Tale-Type number, we would try to simplify our comparative research of folk-tales of all over the world. In this presentation I would refer briefly to our trials and results concerning on (1) digitization, acquisition, and methodologies; (2) metadata standards and applications; (3) sharing resources, ‘Internet Plus’ strategy, and collaboration; (4) language, platform, and possibilities for developing a common working model;(5) case studies and work-in-progress samples in digitizing practices.
In Japan globalization and internet innovation have changed fundamentally our life style and accelerated the generation gap. We have lost a lot of traditional vocabulary necessary to communicate and understand the folktales. So we must encourage and train a new type of the traditional folktale-tellers who can transmit authentic folktales to the younger generation. We believe our database is useful for this mission. And if I have enough time, I would like to introduce our trials using internet homepage and books with DVD.

About the author

Atsushi Higuchi, Comparative Folklorist, born in 1946. Professor of Faculty of Letters of Senshu University; Chairman of East Asian Folklore Database Committee. In 1969 leaving the graduate school of Tokyo University of Education, he studied the theory of literature at Louvain University as scholar of the Belgian government. In 1975, left for Japan, he began to teach various issues on French language and literature at Senshu University. In 1980 he studied the structural analysis of folktale at the EHSS in Paris as scholar of the French government. He became professor of Senshu University in 1985 and tried to introduce some new theories of folklore and folktales translating various French studies into Japanese. Supported by the Japan Society of Promotion of Science (JSPS) ,in 2001 he established Japan folklore database committee (JFDB), in 2006 Okinawa oral tradition database committee (OOTDB), East Asia folklore database committee in 2011. He is author of several books on comparative folklore and folktales; MInwano Morino Arukikata (Orienteering in the forest of folktales) in 2011, Youkai•Kami•Ikyo（Fairies, Gods and Another-world) in 2015, etc.

The Change of “Narration”: On Cultural Transmission in the Development of Technology
Li Song

Human’s modes of cultural transmission are closely related to technological changes. From the evolution of languages, symbols, scripts, paper, printing, sound and visual recording and expressions, one can conclude that the development of technology always has a deep impact upon the changes of human culture. The era of information makes the cultural changes even more unpredictable. Its rapid and deep influence over the society provides human with broad space of imagination for the further development, and raises higher requirements for the academic development and sustainable innovation. It is crucial for the issue that, we have to recognize the inner mechanism of the transformation, in which the shift from “writing” culture to “digitizing” culture happens. Moreover, it is important to utilize the digital technology to discover the complexity of cultural items, so as to formulate a brand new storage and transmission system for human’s knowledge. Specific practices centered on the development of metadata, seek to maximize the sharing of human’s cultural results. Based on the standardization technology and the necessary respect toward cultural diversity, it provides possibilities to integrate unlimited mass data, as well as to communicate in more convenient ways. With the international DC standards, it also provides a technical framework for the description of different cultural items. Meanwhile, it should be recognized that the rapid development of digital technology has extensive impact on digitalized cultural existence in terms of the acquisition, description, recording, archiving and representation of cultural information. The cultural narrative (research) and information technology (and their application) become more and more integrated in more extensive fields, which in return poses a challenge that the shortage of the interdisciplinary experts who can simultaneously understand and apply the two knowledge systems.

About the author

Li Song is the Director of the Development Center for Ethnic and Folk Literature and Art, Ministry for Culture, P. R. China. He has been actively engaged in the safeguarding of ethnic and folk cultures for years. He participated in projects such as the Publication Project of the Collection and Annals of Chinese Ethnic and Folk Literature and Art, a keystone project funded by the National Social Science Foundation; the Research and Demonstration Program of Key Technologies for Cyber culture Security and Ethnic Culture Digitalization, sponsored by China National Science and Technology Infrastructure Program. He conducted programs such as the Fundamental Resources Database Project of Chinese Ethnic and Folk Literature and Art, financed by the Special Fund for National Basic Research Fund of Ministry of Science and Technology of China; the Fundamental Resources Salvage Project of Chinese Ethnic and Folk Literature and Art, subsidized by the Special Fund for National Public Welfare Research; the Investigation on the Current Conditions of Chinese Operas, Folk Dances and Music, supported by the Chinese Ethnic and Folk Cultures Safeguarding Program and the Ministry of Culture. He is now the Executive Deputy Director of the Editorial Committee of the Annals of Chinese Festivals, a major commissioned project funded by the National Social Science Foundation; the Director of China National Standardization Committee of Cultural and Artistic Resources; the Deputy Director of China Foundation of Ethnic Minority Cultures; the Director of Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association. He also serves as the Distinguished Professor or advisor of MA and PHD candidates in various institutions including Shandong University, Southwest University for Nationalities, Yunnan University, Xinjiang Normal University and etc.

Constructing Motif-index of China Mythologies Database: Design, Implementation, and Potential Applications
Guo Cuixiao, Wang Xianzhao, Bamo Qubumo, and Li Gang

Mythology is a form of oral and intangible cultural heritage, carrying rich historical and cultural information. The 56 different ethnic groups in China have numerous myths, both diverse in content and handed down in various forms. The present paper will focus on the design, implementation and application of a mythological motif-index database, known as Wang’s Motif-index of China Mythologies Database. There are 33,469 mythological motifs stored in the database, extracted from 12,600 myths from different ethnic groups in China, and divided into ten groups. The paper will give a detailed introduction to the process of motif extraction and database construction. It will also show the interface and search mechanisms provided by the database. With the open-access online, the thematic database is not only applicable to mythology researchers, but also mythology enthusiasts.

About the authors

Guo Cuixiao, is an assistant research fellow at Documentation and Information Center for Studies of Chinese Ethnic Literature, Institute of Ethnic Literature of Chinese Academy of Social Science. She is also an editor of China Ethnic Literature Network, while acting as the active member of the CASS-level Project for creating and customizing a set of metadata standards specific to Archives of China Ethnic Minorities' Oral Traditions and Wang’s Motif-index of China Mythologies Database. In 2003, she graduated from Minzu University of China, with a MA in Folklore. She was an editor and journalist at CCTV.com, where she created the folklore channel as the chief editor before she went to Chinese Academy of Social Science in July, 2008.
Wang Xianzhao, Ph.D. in Literature, a senior research fellow at Institute of Ethnic Literature of Chinese Academy of Social Science. He is now the director of Documentation and Information Center for Studies of Chinese Ethnic Literature. He graduated from School of Literature, Minzu University of China in 2006, with a PHD in literature, and with a sub-direction in Chinese ethnic literature. He conducted his postdoctoral research at Institute of Ethnic Literature of Chinese Academy of Social Science, focusing on the mythology of ethnic minorities in China. He completed the project The Research on Motifs of Ethnic Myths in China with a monograph. He has published over 30 papers in the relevant fields. He is now the coordinator of the project Wang’s Motif-index of China Mythologies Database.
Born in the Great Cold Mountain of Sichuan, China, Bamo Qubumo comes from Nuosu, a subgroup of the Yi people. She is Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Oral Traditions Research Center at the Institute of Ethnic Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is the author of The Golden-Eagle Spirit and the Poetic Soul: A Study of Ancient Poetics Recorded in the Yi's Scriptures (2000), Spirit Picture and Ghost Board: A Survey of Incantation Epos and Ritualized Paintings in Nuosu Yi Area (2004), plus more than 90 articles. Her new book is in press, titled Verbal Dueling and Epic Performance, a revised edition of her dissertation (2003) which was based on a target field study carried out in her hometown. Bamo also acts as Deputy President of the China Folklore Society, as well as an architect and webmaster of the China Ethnic Literature Network and China Folklore Network. She as expert-in-chief has been working on the CASS-level Project for creating and customizing a set of metadata standards specific to Archives of China Ethnic Minorities' Oral Traditions, a cross-multimedia database whose construction is currently underway.
Li Gang, the founder and Chief Engineer of Beijing Zhongyan Technology Co., Ltd., comes from the Mongols, acting as an executive member of China Folklore Society. Since 2004, he along with his technology team has deeply involved in building and updating the website of IEL, CASS, namely the China Ethnic Literature Network. He not only participates in IEL database construction, including the CASS-level Project for creating and customizing a set of metadata standards specific to Archives of China Ethnic Minorities' Oral Traditions, but also the technical majordomo of China Folklore Network (CFN).