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The Human Relations Area Files was founded at Yale University during the 1930s by Professor George Peter Murdock, a social anthropologist. HRAF was intended to assemble and organize ethnographic data that could be readily retrieved for cross cultural and related behavioral studies. Today, it consists of approximately 4000 books, essays, and manuscripts available to member institutions on paper slips or microfilm cards. This paper attempts to evaluate the ethnographic information that has been drawn from a worldwide sample of cultural units. What has long been needed by scholars, the authors believe, is a thoughtful discussion of both the advantages and disadvantages of this database.
Clarke et al. (Tue,) studied this question.