eHRAF World Cultures

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.

eHRAF 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 (OWC), 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.  The Development and Applications of the HRAF Collections will provide you with an extended overview of these resources.

As a multicultural database, eHRAF 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 electronic versions include more recent source materials and nat all the older sources are retained.  Part of the eHRAF Collection of Ethnography is available on CD-ROM.  Additional cultures are available by special order on microfiche.

Access to the ethnographic database requires membership (or temporary password).  Check our list of member institutions to see if your institution is already a member of the collections. 

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