Grantville has a public library, and each of the schools (high, middle, and elementary) has its own library. These libraries are modeled on those of Mannington, West Virginia, and if you can prove that one of the Mannington’s libraries had a particular book before May 2000, then Ed Board will assume that the comparable library in Grantville had it, too.

There are two resources available for searching the holdings of these libraries. First, there is the MARLO website (http://marlo.fairmontstate.edu/).

This provides the combined catalog of the library holdings of Fairmont State, Glenville State, the Marion County Public Libraries, and the Marion County Public School Libraries. There is a drop-down box by which you can limit the search to a particular library, of which the following are of interest:

  • Mannington Public Library
  • North Marion High School
  • Mannington Middle School
  • Blackshere Elementary School

Unfortunately, we know that at least the Mannington Middle School data is woefully incomplete. Fortunately, we have a second resource, at least for science and technology books. That’s the Mannington Middle School Library Booklist, compiled from photographs taken a few years ago.

You will note that the photo-based booklist shows two field guides to minerals even though a MARLO search on “minerals” won’t find either of them at MMS.

Encyclopedias

The libraries (and private citizens) have all sorts of encyclopedias.

There are two sites for accessing the famous 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:

You can also find the 1911 Encyclopedia on CDROM.

We also have a 2005 FAQ article summarizing Britannica resources.

The modern Encyclopedia Britannica is at http://www.britannica.com/ but that is a subscription site.

The Encyclopedia Americana may be available through the database access page of your local library. At least, that’s how I find it.

You may be able to access the World Book Encyclopedia and the Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia the same way.

The Columbia Encyclopedia is available here http://www.bartleby.com/65/.

How Many Books?

For an estimate of the number of books, and a discussion of the speed with which they can be copied and translated, see Cooper, “My Name Is Legion: Copying the Books of Grantville” (Grantville Gazette 12).