Documentation and Archiving of Endangered
Languages and Oral Tradition:
Researches and Interdisciplinary Approaches

May 19-20, 2011

　　Data Preservation and Indexation: An Analysis on Method for Digital Management of Folklore

　　He Bin

　　A folklore figure refers to a table or a figure used in folklore research reports and articles such as time tables, pictures, diagrams of shape or location, while a folklore map refers to a regular map on which the data of certain folklore events are indexed with different signs, such as maps which show the distribution, transition or contrast of certain folklore phenomena.

　　Folklore map is designed for recording and studying folklore phenomena, by indexing their types, quantities, shapes, features and transitions with various kinds of signs.

　　Both the folklore figure and folklore map are the most commonly used supplementary methods in folklore studies. But the folklore map not only helps readers to better understand the author’s statements and records of folklore phenomena, more importantly and primarily, it is an important tool for the author to classify and analyze folklore data. The academic field of folkloristics in Japan defines folklore map as one of the supplementary methods of folklore study, particularly in the class of methods to sort out folklore materials.

　　The folklore map came into being at the joint of geology and folkloristics. The introduction of geological concepts and map designing in the folkloristics did not develop into a new research field as branches of geological humanity sciences did, rather, it was formed into a specific method of sorting and understanding folklore materials—a technique of drawing and applying folklore maps and a research method of folklore maps.

　　A folklore map can be used to show the geographical distribution and the spatial and temporal differences of a folklore phenomenon, for its two-dimensional, easily visible, time-lined features. By indexing a folklore phenomenon on a map, we can show how it is related to or disconnected with bordering regions paradigmatically. Folklore maps indexed with time factor, instead, show the historical relations of a folklore phenomenon in a certain period of time syntagmatically.

　　The mapmaker make indexes of folklore materials on a map after the digitalization and symbolization of the map, and readers may grasp folklore data, and reshape folklore phenomena by comprehending and analyzing the signs marked on the folklore map.