Culture Profile

Overview

Each Culture Profile consists of three parts:

1)     a file description

2)     a file table of contents with links to full-text documents

3)     a cultural summary

File Description

Figure 3: File Description - Click to see image

The File Description contains information about the types of documents, number of documents, number of pages, and information (if any) about the microfiche file for each culture.  Further, the File Description gives a more specific description of the geographical location of the culture.  For example, the File Description for the Blackfoot locates the culture in “northern Montana” of the United States (fig. 3)

File Table of Contents (File TOC)

Figure 4: File TOC - Click to see image

The File Table of Contents lists the full-text documents available for each culture, such as books, dissertations, journal articles, and monographs.  The number of documents varies greatly from culture to culture, usually as a function of the amount of ethnographic study available.

Most of the documents listed for a given culture are ethnographies.  As a whole, the culture profile aims to describe most aspects of social and cultural life for a culture or ethnic group, as well as provide descriptions of the culture at various points in time.

Most documents in eHRAF refer only to one specific culture.  Thus, you will not find any documents about “the mythology of North American Indians” because they refer to multiple culture groups.  You can, however, find documents specifically referring to Blackfoot mythology, such as  The Sun God’s Children.

Cultural Summary

The Cultural Summary is useful if you want a quick overview of the culture.  To facilitate comparison, all of the cultural summaries have standardized headings.  Please note that the Cultural Summary cannot be searched in Text Search and is not indexed with OCM Subject Codes (which we will encounter later on). 

File Evaluation and Indexing Notes

At the end of the Cultural Summary is the File Evaluation, writted by the HRAF analyst.  It may help provide some guidance about subjects and time periods covered.

The Indexing Notes section is the final entry in the Cultural Summary and contains translations and explanations of words and terms from the culture’s documents with references to the corresponding OCM Subject Codes. 

Additional Information