YEREVAN, MARCH 30, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA NAS Armenian Encyclopedia publishing house will publish this year the second volume of the "Who is Who: Armenians" biographic encyclopedia. It will involve biographic data of those prominent Armenia who had considerable achievements in different spheres: science, culture, policy, ect., from the pagan times to our days. As Hovhannes Aivazian, the publishing house editor-in-chief informed the Noyan Tapan correspondent, the first volume of the "School Encyclopedia" will also be published till the end of the year, and the second volume will be published in 2008. It was mentioned that the third, "Armenian Nature" volume of the "Family Encyclopedia" series of publications was published in January. It is a scientific-cognitive encyclopedia about the native nature, its physical and geographic conditions, minerals, flora and fauna, ecologic and nature protection problems. In H. Aivazian's words, money given from the state budget to the publishing house dicreases year by year. So, if 28 mln drams were given to the publishing house in 2005, 30 mln drams (83.3 thousand U.S. dollars) were given in 2006, only 20 mln drams were given this year. Whereas, in his words, 50 mln drams are annually necessary for publication of voluminous encyclopedias. As H. Aivazian mentioned voluminous encyclopedias were published in post-Soviet countries after the independence in which the whole history of those states is represented. "No similar encyclopedia was yet published in Armenia, but its necessity is great," the editor-in-chief of the publishing house noticed.

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