The Human Relations Area Files

Abstract

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the incorporation of the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) as a private, nonprofit educational institution. HRAF was founded and continues to exist with one primary mission in mind—to encourage and facilitate the cross‐cultural study of human culture, society, and behavior. This mission has mainly involved the continuous expansion, updating, refinement, and distribution of the Human Relations Area Files Cultural Information Archive (HRAF Archive). The archive, which now contains nearly 800,000 pages of text, provides both historic and contemporary descriptive information on the ways of life of people in over 330 different cultural, ethnic, religious, and national groups around the world.

Citation

Levinson, D. (1989), "The Human Relations Area Files", Reference Services Review, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 83-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb049068