eHRAF World Cultures

eHRAF World Cultures is an online cross-cultural database that contains information on all aspects of cultural and social life. The annually-growing eHRAF database is unique in that the information is organized into cultures and ethnic groups and the full-text sources are subject-indexed at the paragraph level.

Whether you are interested in learning about the North American Hmong's beliefs in the causes and cures of diseases or the Pashtun's religious views, this multi-cultural database provides you with in-depth information on all aspects of cultural and social life.

This ethnographic database is unique because each culture or ethnic group contains a variety of source documents (books, articles, and dissertations) that have been indexed and organized according to HRAF's comprehensive culture and subject classification systems:the Outline of World Cultures and the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM). These retrieval systems extend search capability well beyond keyword searching thus allowing for precise culture and subject retrieval, even in a foreign language. 

As a multicultural database, eHRAF World Cultures appeals to many academic disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, medicine, and any other area with an interest in cultural diversity.

Features and Benefits

• Supports college and high school curricula in humanities and social sciences -- anthropology, social studies, history, sociology, geography, language, multicultural studies, political science, human development, arts, and medicine.
• Brief overviews of cultures on general topics such as demography, economy, social organization and more.
• Students can browse a single culture or conduct cross-cultural research within regions or throughout the world.
• Students learn about cultural similarities and differences, about the cultural customs and ethnic beliefs of groups all over the world, including US and Canadian immigrants and Native North Americans.
• The works include ethnohistories as well as recent ethnographies thus allowing for the fullest coverage of the culture
• eHRAF serves as an excellent research and teaching tool for cross-cultural studies
• Teaching eHRAF is a teaching resource that can be used in association with the ethnographic database.

It is important to note that cultures in the microfiche and electronic versions of the HRAF Collection of Ethnography are not covered in the same ways; the online version (eHRAF World Cultures) includes more recent source materials and not all the older sources are retained.  Additional cultures are available by special order on microfiche.

Access to the online eHRAF World Cultures (http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu) database requires membership (or temporary password).  Check our list of member institutions to see if your institution is already a member of HRAF. A free month trial for eHRAF World Cultures available for interested individuals and a semester-long trial is available for institutions. 

To subscribe to eHRAF, individuals or institutions (colleges, universities, public libraries, museums, high schools, etc.) must first become part of the HRAF consortium.  Contact HRAF for more information at 1-800-520-HRAF (4723), 203-764-9401, or hraf@yale.edu.