Portal:Ethnology

Welcome to the School of Ethnology!

The goal of ethnology is to document, preserve and compare diverse cultures from around the world, especially indigenous ones. Emphasis is placed in this school on how these cultures have evolved over time and how they might evolve in the future. It is especially important not to regard any culture as stagnant or primitive; part of the purpose of this school is to better educate the public on the things all cultures share as well as what makes them different as to promote understanding and peace between cultures.

This school is classed as an interdisciplinary study in Wikiversity, therefore many of our resources are also classed under different schools such as History and Music and Dance, depending on the resource. Our departments are forums for the creation of resources pertaining to different cultures, but do not forget to link to your resources in other areas of Wikiversity where they may be relevant.

We ask that you do not found your own department without discussing the matter on our discussion page first, as we are trying to avoid duplicate or empty departments. Look for a department where your resource may be relevant first and create it there. For a basic overview of formatting, templates and categorization standards in this school, please see our editing guidelines.

Divisions

The school is divided by continent, listed alphabetically below. Each division will contain a list of departments. Major subjects considered subdivisions of ethnology but not continent-specific (such as history of ethnology) may be listed below as well.

Ethnologies division a place for disciplines such as ethnobotany and ethnomusicology that span multiple continents
History of ethnology

School programs and reference

Streams sort of like school clubs to coordinate learning
School of Ethnology library an organization of relevant resources on the WikiProjects and beyond
Course plans suggested course sequences for certain studies

Bulletin board

Keep posts relevant to our school and to-the-point. Dated posts will be deleted after a few months.

Learning project news

May 5th 2009 - School founded!
August 18th 2009 - Our school is finally "open for business"! While we ask that you do not create your own departments just yet, please feel free to create learning resources and explore our school. However, please make sure that all resources are properly categorized within the category tree. See the category taskforce for help with this.

School layout news

May 5th 2009 - School founded!
May 6th 2009 - check out our cool division headers - visit any of the divisions to see! This should make navigation of our school much easier for novice Wiki users.
June 2 2009 - see the Anishinabe department for a model department set-up. You can always use the Commons Wiki project for photos.

Task list

We are always looking for help answering questions at the various reference desks of the school.

For a full user-friendly listing of these reference desks please see the Reference desks.
To see all the resources we have so far please see the Directory

Now hiring

In addition to users creating their own learning content, the School of Ethnology would like to have "staff" members of various divisions and departments.

All of the divisions need maintenance crew members. Please sign your name on their staff bulletin boards on the respective division pages if you are interested.

A collection of pages that will allow you to better navigate the school: