Fundamentals of Reference

45

eight

Biographical sources

History is the story of innumerable biographies.

—Thomas Carlyle

o

ne thing i’ve learned in my years as a reference librarian is that people
are interested in other people, that is, in their birth and death dates,
background, ethnicity, marital status, accomplishments, and so on. Celebrities,
both living and dead, historical figures, sports heroes, world leaders, notorious
criminals, entertainers, and many others are all a frequent subject of “Who is

... ?” or “How old is... ?” questions. Biographical information can certainly
be found in general reference sources such as encyclopedias, but for more
detailed information it is often better to turn to a specifically biographical ref-
erence source. As is the case with many kinds of reference works, biographical
reference sources may be very general, covering a wide variety of people, or
very specific, focusing on the notables of one country or in a particular field.
Perhaps more than any other type of reference source, the biographical refer-
ence work has undergone a significant change in format in recent years. As
Jack O’Gorman and Sue Polanka note in the chapter on biography in Reference
Sources for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries,

The development of extensive online biographical resources has

been a big change... Marquis Who’s Who on the Web, Biography