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Brief details
- You can check the freely available
Oxford biography index
for the full names, birth and death dates and fields of activity of over 55,000 notable people from British history.
Search the index by using a
general search engine. Just add odnb
after the name you are searching. For example, type jane austen odnb
- In the online reference book collections
Oxford Reference Online
and
Credo Reference you
can
find concise information on individuals associated with many subjects, such as
music, theatre, politics, science and more
- Among the books in
Credo Reference are 'Chambers biographical dictionary', which has concise details
on people from all periods worldwide, and books focusing on women's biography
-
If you need to check up on the aristocracy see 'Debrett's peerage and
baronetage' in
Credo Reference. This gives details of families and
pictures of coats of arms
- At the
Biography web site, on the
Gateway to the Internet, there are details of thousands
of well-known people, past and present, including popular musicians and actors
More substantial information
- For people no longer living who were involved in some way with
British history worldwide, search the huge
Oxford
Dictionary of National
Biography. It gives long expert articles on people from all walks of life
from the 4th century BC onwards. The dictionary also has 10,000 portrait
images. You can search by name and also by many other features such as place,
dates and fields of interest
- At
Credo Reference, you can go to 'Advanced search'
and select 'Longer results' as your preferred option
- At
Oxford Reference Online,
when you see your search results you can click a 'longer entries' tab so as to
see list longer results listed first
- For biographical articles,
images and web links, visit the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
online
-
Gale Virtual Reference Library
is especially useful for searching for US individuals, but it also includes
the 23-volume 'Encyclopedia of
world biography', covering notable individuals from
every part of the world, and from all time periods, together with many photos
- For present-day individuals, you may also find biographical articles in
Newspapers online. You can search a database
of daily and Sunday newspaper articles from July 1985 onwards and, for earlier
news, search the 'Times Digital Archive' which covers 1785 -1985
- You may also find biographical information in
Magazines and journals
online, for example in the history magazines
-
The 60-volume
 Oxford
Dictionary of National
Biography is available at
Bedford Central,
Dunstable and
Leighton Buzzard libraries, in addition to being in
reference books online
-
The annual
Who's who has over 32,000 short biographies of living noteworthy and
influential individuals, from all walks of life, worldwide. It is available at several
libraries
-
Over 100 years of 'Who's who' entries are in the
CD-ROM 'Who's who 1897 - 1996', at
Bedford Central,
Dunstable and
Leighton Buzzard libraries
-
The companion title
Who was who contains entries for people after they have
died. It was originally published every ten years and now every five years.
Several libraries hold individual volumes while the complete set covering 1897 - 2000
is available
at
Bedford Central and
Dunstable
libraries. You can read
more about 'Who's who', 'Who was who' and their history at the
Who's who web site
-
Chambers biographical dictionary
with over 17,500 biographies of people past and present, from all countries, is
at most libraries
At
Bedford Central,
Dunstable and
Leighton Buzzard libraries you can
also find many specialist biographical dictionaries of
scientists, artists, designers,
musicians, writers, actors and more. The largest collection is at
Bedford Central Library
Further information
Bedfordshire
libraries
contact details and opening times |
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