HRAF Timeline

For over 70 years, HRAF has served the educational community and contributed to an understanding of world cultures by assembling, indexing, and providing access to primary research materials relevant to the social sciences, as well as by stimulating and facilitating training and research in these fields. The following timeline shows some of the major highlights throughout the history of the Human Relations Area Files.

New era of eHRAF live for all users

August 1, 2023

After years of development, beta testing, and user feedback, the latest eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology applications replaced the retired legacy versions on August 1, 2023. Feedback on the new databases over the past two years was overwhelmingly positive from both longtime and new users of eHRAF. The new applications boast a host of new features including enhanced filters, search insights and notebooks, as well as speed improvements and a lighter and more intuitive design.

Legacy (2013) eHRAF applications retired

July 31, 2023

The “classic” eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology applications that were first designed and built in-house by developers at HRAF in 2013 were officially retired on July 31, 2023. Both applications have been updated with a brand new look, performance enhancements and additional features.

New eHRAF World Cultures application launches

August 15, 2022

The new eHRAF World Cultures application offers a fresh look and feel that combines the best aspects of our classic eHRAF interface with a host of added features and enhancements. For example, search filters have been expanded with new options, and users can customize how they would like their search results to be displayed on the page. The Search Insights panel offers additional options for visualizing and drilling down through results sets. An exciting new development for researchers is the eHRAF Notebook, which allows paragraph search results to be saved, organized, annotated, and shared. In addition to the sleek new appearance, users benefit from many performance upgrades enabling faster searching and more relevant paragraph results.

Teaching eHRAF revamped

August 20, 2017

Teaching eHRAF, the collection of companion teaching exercises for eHRAF World Cultures, eHRAF Archaeology and Explaining Human Culture, got a new look and feel in August 2017.

Beta development begins on eHRAF World Cultures

July 1, 2016

HRAF IT began developing a new version of our flagship eHRAF World Cultures application in 2016. By 2020, the new application would be in the final stages of beta testing, with an anticipated launch date of 2022. At the heart of the new application design, headed by HRAF Software Engineer Matthew Roth, is a much-anticipated Notebook feature to allow users to save, share, and annotate search results. The new application will also receive a number of performance upgrades enabling faster searching and more relevant results.

HRAF expands collaboration with D-PLACE

July 1, 2016

D-PLACE is an expandable and open-access database that brings together a dispersed corpus of information on the geography, language, culture, and environment of over 1400 human societies. In July 2016, it became easier than ever to follow links from the coded data in D-PLACE directly into the eHRAF World Cultures.

Explaining Human Culture

June 24, 2016

In the summer of 2016, HRAF launched Explaining Human Culture, an open access database containing information on over 1,000 cross-cultural studies spanning more than 100 years. EHC provides a searchable way for researchers to find out what we have learned from previous cross-cultural research about cultural universals and differences.

Introducing Cross-Cultural Research

June 23, 2016

In 2016, HRAF diversified its product offerings with new open-access resources for learning and teaching. Introducing Cross-Cultural Research is a visual online course on the fundamentals of cross-cultural research produced by Carol Ember, HRAF President.

Citations and Permalinks added to eHRAF

May 14, 2015

In 2015, quick and easy citations and document permalinks were added to the eHRAF databases, making saving and sharing documents and search results a snap.

New HRAF homepage launches

March 11, 2014

The Human Relations Area Files homepage was re-launched with a fresh new look and design. The new URL, hraf.yale.edu, is now home to the eHRAF Highlights anthropology blog, user guides, teaching exercises and pages of information about cross-cultural research. It has quickly become an indispensable companion to the eHRAF databases.

New eHRAF World Cultures application goes live

July 1, 2013

This updated version of eHRAF World Cultures was designed and built in-house by developers at HRAF. Software engineers Doug Black and Matthew Roth worked to improve the front end with more user-friendly revisions, creating the familiar interface that users got to know and love for the next decade until the latest launch in 2022.

New eHRAF World Cultures application online

February 1, 2008

On February 1, 2008, HRAF began hosting its own application, re-titled eHRAF World Cultures.

eHRAF Archaeology goes online

January 1, 1999

eHRAF Archaeology became HRAF’s second electronic database. It has been building solely in electronic format since 1999. Expanding annually, this database covers major archaeological traditions and many more sub-traditions and sites around the world. Learn more.

First online eHRAF Collection of Ethnography opens

January 1, 1997

The first online version of the eHRAF Collection of Ethnography was available in 1997 and was hosted by the Digital Library Production Service at the University of Michigan.

HRAF goes electronic

April 1, 1995

The first installment of the full-text HRAF Collection of Ethnography on CD-ROM (eHRAF) was available to members in April 1995. The CDs were produced for 7 years.

Microfiche no longer produced

January 1, 1993

The HRAF Collection of Ethnography was originally distributed as paper files. From the early 1960s until 1994, most members received their annual installments on microfiche.

Cross-cultural CDs available

September 1, 1989

In the 1980s, HRAF began developing an electronic publishing program with the intention of distributing the Collection of Ethnography exclusively through electronic means. In 1989, HRAF’s Cross-Cultural CDs provided researchers with ten topics including old age, marriage, religion, and human sexuality, excerpted from HRAF’s Sixty Culture Probability Sample Files (PSF). There were five volumes in total. The final volume was released in 1995.

HRAF Files distributed in microfiche

January 1, 1958

Wider distribution of the HRAF Collection of Ethnography was facilitated in 1958 with the development of the HRAF Microfiche Files.

HRAF Collection of Ethnography paper files released

June 1, 1949

From 1949 to 1958, the HRAF Collection of Ethnography was produced and distributed as paper files: source materials were manually reproduced on 5″ x 8″ paper slips called File pages, and then indexed by subject (OCM) category and filed by culture.

HRAF founded

May 7, 1949

Human Relations Area Files, Inc. has been a financially autonomous research agency based at Yale University since 1949. On February 26, 1949, delegates from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Washington, and Yale University met in New Haven, Connecticut to pledge their membership in a new nonprofit research consortium to be based at Yale. On May 7, 1949, the HRAF consortium was formally established.

Researchers begin work on Cross-Cultural Survey

January 1, 1935

In 1935, a small group of researchers at the interdisciplinary Institute of Human Relations, Yale University, under the direction of the Institute’s Director, Mark A. May, and Professor George Peter Murdock, began to design a system that would allow the rapid retrieval of information on a broad range of societies. The resulting Cross-Cultural Survey would become the foundation for the HRAF Collection of Ethnography.