Author (and other) indexes at URL below (U of Virginia); see extended entry for details.
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/anthropology/hraf/hauthors.html
We sometimes have trouble identifying a specific Human Relations Area Files
document found in MNCAT, since the MNCAT record gives only the microfilm
number for the whole set as a location -- for instance:
Author Motolinía, Toribio, d. 1568.
Title Motolinia's History of the Indians of New Spain. [Microform] Translated and annotated with a bio-bibliographical study of the author [by] Francis Borgia Steck.
Published Washington, D.C., Academy of American Franciscan History, 1951.
Description 20, 358 p. illus.
Availability TC Wilson Library Reference Mfiche 45
Note Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich., University Microfilms, 19--. 1 microfiche. 11 x 15 cm. (Human relations area files, HRAF)
Material Type bks
mic
System No. 001806118
The usual approach, when the cultural group in question could be identified from
the citation, is to check the Area Index to see what the code for that group is,
then to check the HRAF Source Bibliography under the code to verify and see what
the number of the specific text is under that code. But in some cases, as the
one above, it's not clear what the exact cultural group involved is. In those
cases, in the past, I've generally searched WorldCat or googled to try to find
a library that had cataloged an HRAF version of the document to a level more
detailed than we did.
Yesterday when trying approach B on the document above, I found this site at
the University of Virginia:
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/anthropology/hraf/hmain.html
which, aside from having the Area Index and the Outline of Cultural Materials
etc. online (itself useful), has an author index to the authors of all
works represented in the HRAF through 1999:
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/anthropology/hraf/hauthors.html
and with that I found the proper reference in a moment:
Motolinia, Toribio de. NU7-34
(The group turns out to be the Aztec.)
The Virginia site claims to be mirrored from the Yale homepage for HRAF,
and the Yale page does also have versions of the Outline of World Cultures
(aka Area Index) and Outline of Cultural Materials (eg subject index), but
I don't see there an equivalent to the author index on the Virginia site:
http://www.yale.edu/hraf/collections.htm
I'll also add this note to the IRIS blog.
Denny Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien@umn.edu