Follow

• 

  West Virginia Folk Music: A Descriptive Guide to Field Recordings in the West Virginia and Regional History Collection

  John A. Cuthbert

  West Virginia University's contribution to the foundation of modern folk music scholarship is widely recognized. Due to the pioneering achievements of its faculty, the University became an important center of folksong scholarship in the 1920s and 30s. John Harrington Cox's Folk-Songs of the South' served as both precedent and pattern for the myriad of subsequent publications upon which folksong study is based.Various works by Josiah Combs, who taught at the University for but a few years, and Louis Watson Chappell, who remained throughout his career, are equally notable if less obviously influential. The University's subsequent contributions to the field, however, are less well-known but of comparable significance. Indeed, the materials presented in this guide offer ample proof that interest in the subject did not come to a halt with the publication of Cox's Traditional Ballads Mainly from West Virginia and Folksongs Mainly from West Virginia in 1939. More recent research has gone for the most part unpublished and unknown despite its value to folklore scholarship. Fortunately, the fruits of much of this work have found their way into the West Virginia and Regional History Collection where they have been preserved and made available for research.

• 

  West Virginia History : A Bibliography and Guide to Research

  Harold M. Forbes

  This bibliography is a guide to printed materials dealing with West Virginia history. The sources listed include books, pamphlets, periodical literature, and unpublished theses and dissertations. As a rule, genealogies have been excluded unless they offer narrative history on West Virginia topics. This is a comprehensive list of the best and most readily available resources on various historical subjects, and the more obscure sources which are excluded are accessible through other bibliographies and indexes which may be found in this guide. My purpose is to make information concerning the printed resources on West Virginia history accessible to both the beginning student and the advanced researcher.