Superior Coverage and Search
Biography Reference Source provides thousands of unique and reliable full-text biographies, including the complete full text of Biography and Biography Today. In addition to searching individual names, you can also search by categories such as:
- Activists & Reformers
- Artists
- Athletes
- Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs
- Culture, Race & LGBTQ+
- Explorers & Pioneers
- Film, Television & the Performing Arts
- Historical Figures
- Inventors & Innovators
- Literary Figures
- Musicians
- Politics & Government
- Religious Figures
- Scientists, Mathematicians & Engineers
- The Nobel Prizes
Sources Include
- Biography Today's complete collection
- Biography's complete collection
- Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography
- Biographies from Columbia University Press
- Congressional biographies from the American Reference Library
- Biographies from Encyclopædia Britannica
- Harvard University Press: Notable American Women, a Biographical Dictionary (Vols. 1-5)
- Profiles of United States presidents
- Biographies from Salem Press
Getting Started with Your Search
From the homepage of Biography Reference Source, you can enter your search terms in the box near the top of the page, if you know who you are interested in researching, as shown in the image below.
Alternatively, you can scroll down the homepage to locate one of the categories that interests you. These are shown in the image below. Once you click a category, a new page will open with further options that can be narrowed down until you reach a list of names in that subject area.
Once you narrow your topic, your results page will provide a list of possible resources for you. There are some things to look for, highlighted in the image below to help you ensure you find the sources you need most.
- Click the "Peer Reviewed" filter to narrow your field of results.
- This filter allows you to select the publication date ranges you need. For example, some professors request that you use resources from the last 5 years, or last 12 months. This filter offers 3 filters: last 12 months, last 5 years, and last 10 years.
- The "Source Type" filter offers options such as academic journals, encyclopedia entries, magazines, and more, depending on the topic you searched.
- Always check what this area says when you are looking at results. This database offers an array of different sources, and not all of them are academic journal articles. There are also ebooks, book chapters, magazine articles, transcripts, reviews, news sources, and more.
- This part of the record will let you know how the resource can be accessed. Some will be in PDF format, others are webpages, and others are media files.
