The Encyclopedia is designed in an innovative structure that combines four types of entries:

• Traditional Entries, or basic encyclopedic summaries of the knowledge in a typical area or field of study;
• Feature Entries, which include innovative analyses, reinterpretations, and human-interest essays that probe basic conceptual issues in the study and prevention of genocide.
• Features, which are similar to feature stories and reports of background information in newspapers, through which the reader will be exposed to more affective writing and information to accompany the basic traditional encyclopedic entry;
• Source Documents, which provide the verbatim texts of important and informative documents in the genesis of a genocide event—such as the verdict of the Turkish Military Court that at one point convicted the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide; the Protocol of the infamous Wannsee Conference in which the Nazis took their final formal decision to implement the Final Solution of the Holocaust; and the text of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Encyclopedia also features throughout pertinent and meaningful photographs, works of art, maps, and tabular representations to enhance the reader’s knowledge and facilitate the intellectual and emotional comprehension of the academic entries.

The purpose is to create for the reader an unfolding invitation to a broad intellectual, emotional, and even spiritual experience.

This basic reference work marks a further stage in the development of the field of genocide studies which is a subject of study which cuts across traditional disciplines and is being studied in many different college and university departments, so that the Encyclopedia will provide an easily recognizable access for students and researchers from many different fields of inquiry.