Ethnological Images Database Project is one of the digital archive projects in response to the call for preserving photos of minority peoples collected during field research by the Institute of History and Philology. These photos are precious information about the peoples’ daily life, their villages and forts, religious rituals, physical features, etc. This project will design a digital archive database for preservation, research and educational promotion of these photos as well as a tailor-made information management system that arranges ethnological images and photos by date and subject. These invaluable photos will thus be preserved in a perfect condition.

A major part of these ethnological photos were collected by the Institute during 1929 to 1943 when its research teams were dispatched into the southern, southwestern and northeastern areas of China for long-term and intensive field research. A vast number of artefacts, documents and field photos were taken and preserved in this task. The Institutes’ researchers again collected some other artefacts, photos and audio data of these minority peoples in their field research in southwestern China after 1990s. These new materials are very important for the history and cultural study of minority peoples in contemporary China, for we can understand the cultural and social development of peoples in that area through comparison of these new data with the old ones.

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