Documents

Overview

The documents are the books, journal articles, dissertations, or manuscripts in the HRAF database.  These full-text documents cover most aspects of cultural and social life – from basket making to infant toilet training to funeral rites. In each document, every paragraph is indexed with OCM subject codes, allowing you to search for subjects at the paragraph level.  In addition to its text, each document contains publication information, a short abstract, place and time coverage, and a table of contents.  Figures, bibliographic references, indices, and appendices may also be included. 

Looking at Documents

When opening a document from the File TOC, you will see the page divided into two sections: right and left.  The right-hand side contains publication information, which includes the author’s name, the document title, the publisher, and an abstract written by a HRAF analyst.  Also listed in this area are the main OCM Subject Codes for the document, to give you a sense of information you can find.  For example, our sample document The Sun God’s Children is mainly about such topics as History (OCM 175), Hunting and Trapping (OCM 224), Diet (OCM 262), and Mythology (OCM 773) for the Blackfoot.  Other information (such as the document’s field date, coverage place and date, and type) can be found by clicking the “go to long view” button. 

Figure 5: Document TOC - Click to see image.

The left-hand side of the screen contains the document’s table of contents. Depending on the type of document, you may see chapter titles, or just headings titled “section” (if there were no named headings).  The words in these chapter and sub-chapter titles can be used to search for information in Text Search, as will be discussed later.  Clicking on a chapter title will open up that chapter in the right-hand window.

OCM Subject Codes

Analysts at HRAF read every paragraph in our database, indexing each with OCM Subject Codes (OCMs) that summarize the main topics of the paragraph.  The number of OCMs for a given paragraph is determined by the variety of topics that paragraph covers, meaning some paragraphs have only one or two OCMs and others have several.  The paragraphs in Figure 6, from The Sun God’s Children, discuss the mythological relationship between humans and animals, and so are indexed with the OCM for mythology – 773.  Additionally, this chapter is a narrative, told by Chief Crowfoot, so it is indexed with OCM 903.  The names and descriptions of each OCM category can be found by clicking on its subject code number. 

Figure 6: Full-Text Document - Click to see image.

The page headings (fig. 6) found in the body of each chapter contain information such as the culture name, field date, publication date, location, and date coverage.  In the current chapter, there is reference to “northwestern Plains, Montana, United States,” giving us the location of the Blackfoot.

In the next section, we will learn to find the OCM for a given subject

Additional Information:

Terms: OCM Subject Codes, File TOC