Published: April 19, 2008 02:42 pm         

BAF helps distribute new West Virginia Encyclopedia

The West Virginia Encyclopedia, published by the West Virginia Humanities Council, will be placed in 28 Raleigh County schools with generous support of the Beckley Area Foundation. BAF awarded a grant to the Humanities Council to provide copies of the West Virginia Encyclopedia for elementary, middle and high schools in Raleigh County.

The West Virginia Encyclopedia is in all or some of the schools in a majority of West Virginia’s counties placed through the financial support of donors or purchased by individual schools or school boards. The West Virginia Humanities Council offers a discount to schools and works to match schools with donors, as in the case of the Beckley Area Foundation.

“Given the cost of producing an oversized hardbound book of nearly a thousand pages, we unfortunately cannot give the West Virginia Encyclopedia to educators free of charge,” says Ken Sullivan, the encyclopedia’s editor and executive director of the Humanities Council. “We appreciate the leadership of the Beckley Area Foundation in putting an excellent resource in the hands of Raleigh County teachers and students,” Sullivan adds.

The Humanities Council published the West Virginia Encyclopedia on West Virginia Day, June 20, 2006. The book is now in its second printing with more than 16,000 copies sold. It includes 2,200 articles by 600 writers, experts in fields ranging from archeology, biography, history and literature through folklore, culture, and the arts and sciences. The encyclopedia is indexed and cross-referenced with more than 400 illustrations and a bibliography listing thousands of citations. It sells for $44.95.

To encourage use of the West Virginia Encyclopedia in classrooms, the Humanities Council issued a set of 25 lesson plans last year. Developed by a team of experienced educators, the lesson plans are available as a CD-ROM and online at the Council we site, www.wvhumanities.org. The lesson plans, for both the 8th grade and elementary levels, address applicable content standards and objectives and deal with a wide range of subjects ordinarily covered in the teaching of West Virginia Studies.

The West Virginia Encyclopedia will be distributed to Raleigh County schools through the office of Superintendent Charlotte Hutchens.

For more information on school sponsorships, available through the West Virginia Humanities Council, contact the Council office at 304-346-8500 or visit the wvhumanities.org.