Customizing discipline-based metadata standards for digital preservation of living epic traditions in China: Basic principles and challenges

Epics in China are large in scale with multiple types. Creation epics, origination epics, and heroic epics have been orally transmitted or circulated among many ethnic groups. As a leading academic institution in the field of epic studies, the Institute of Ethnic Literature (IEL), Chines Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) has been committed to collecting, preserving, and exploring Chinese ethnic epic traditions for more than three decades so far. Since 2011, IEL has launched a key project entitled “IEL Archives for Ethnic Minorities' Oral Traditions in China” at CASS level to construct a digital database to document and manage oral tradition materials, including epic tradition materials collected by research fellows from IEL during these years. The Epic Collection at IEL's Documentation Center for Ethnic Literature in China encompasses 43 ethnic minorities' epics handed down in the mainland China, especially the Three Grand Epics, namely Tibetan-Mongolian epic King Gesar/Geser, Mongolian epic Jangar, and Kirgiz epic Manas, which are still performed by the epic singers and storytellers from the different ethnic groups in the remote areas. Its main repositories possess audio-visual recordings, photographs, and varied manuscripts or texts with regard to different thematic data or data sets on epic traditional skills, expressive forms, social practices, ritual events, as well as life histories of epic performers and folk artists. The goal of the digital database, as established by IEL's plan, to serve for both academic studies and public promotion, along with the increasing need to share data, has made it essential to customize discipline-based metadata standards and facilitate the integration of different database. In the present paper, we introduce the process of customizing discipline-based metadata standards devoted to the documentation of living epic traditions in China, discussing the challenges we have encountered and our solutions, as well as some considerations of descriptive metadata for intangible cultural heritage.