Encyclopedia of Associations

{{Short description|Reference work}}

{{Infobox book

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| name = Encyclopedia of Associations

| image = File:Encyclopedia_of_Associations.png

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| caption = Encyclopedia of Associations 42nd Edition Volume 3

| author = Frederick Gale Ruffner Jr.

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| country = United States

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| genre = Reference

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| publisher = Gale

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| published = 1954

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The Encyclopedia of Associations (EA) is a comprehensive directory of more than 20,000 associations, societies, and other non-profit membership organizations in the United States of America.{{Cite web |url=http://www.gale.cengage.com/DirectoryLibrary/GML33507EA%20GDL.pdf |title=Encyclopedia of Associations |access-date=2014-10-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141127102355/http://www.gale.cengage.com/DirectoryLibrary/GML33507EA%20GDL.pdf |archive-date=2014-11-27 |url-status=dead }}

Originally titled the Encyclopedia of American Associations, EA was created by Frederick Gale Ruffner, Jr. in 1954 while he was working as a market researcher in Detroit, Michigan.{{Cite journal|last=Enis|first=Matt|date=August 21, 2014 |title=Gale Founder Frederick Ruffner Dies at 88|url=https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=gale-founder-frederick-ruffner-dies-at-88|access-date=October 3, 2014|website=Library Journal}}

More than 140 scholarly articles have made use of EA.[http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/papers/JSTOR-EA-annotated-bibliography.pdf "An Annotated Bibliography of Articles Using the Encyclopedia of Associations" - Retrieved October 3, 2014.]

Past extracts from EA have included "Organized Obsessions" [http://lccn.loc.gov/92219621 - Library of Congress LCCN Permalink for 92219621] and the "Gale Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Associations".[http://lccn.loc.gov/95649648 - Library of Congress LCCN Permalink for 95649648]

A detailed history of EA is available in an article in Distinguished Classics of Reference Publishing[https://archive.org/stream/DistinguishedClassicsOfReferencePublishing#page/n101/mode/2up - Tobin, Carol M. "The Book that Built Gale Research: The Encyclopedia of Associations." Distinguished Classics of Reference Publishing][http://lccn.loc.gov/91033629 - Library of Congress LCCN Permalink for 91033629]