How to use the OCM in a language-culture field project

How to use the OCM in a language-culture field project

Introduction
	The Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM) was not originally designed for use in field work. Some field researchers find it unwieldy for that purpose and prefer to design their own system. Others find the OCM helpful and are able to adapt it for categorizing and accessing material from their ethnographic and language texts.
	If you have a copy of the OCM, you can use it in a field project whether you are working on paper or on a computer.

Guidelines
	Here is a guideline to follow when you use the OCM in a language-culture field project:
	Divide a category into as many subcategories as you need to usefully cover a particular domain of your notes or data. A mixture of numbers and letters may be used as tags where necessary as in the case of doing ethnomusicological analysis.

Things to do
	Here are the things you can do when you use the OCM in a language-culture field project:
	Categorize your language and culture field notes and data using OCM 's numerical codes. Categorize material other than your own, such as material you plan to translate. Access all data belonging to a particular category. Review what you have gathered so far under any given category or set of categories that you have coded. Compare other categorized material with your own for other research purposes. Identify data gaps and other research possibilities. Contribute to cross-cultural research by making available your categorized material.

See also
	Example: How to use the OCM category "Fishing"

Context for this page:

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 21 March 1999