Reference Reviews

Doug's Student Reference Room

Title: Biography Resource Center
Publisher: Gale
URL: http://www.gale.com/BiographyRC
Evaluated: February, 2008

In secondary school libraries, biographies always seem to be in high demand. Teachers like students to investigate historical figures in more depth than their textbooks allow; students enjoy researching current celebrities and other notables, and biographical research can span a school's entire curriculum. Gale's Biography Resource Center is an essential database for biographical research, providing information on over 340,000 subjects, both contemporary and historical.

Organized like Gale's other Resource Centers, results are displayed under convenient tabs that organize different kinds of sources: biographies, brief biographies, magazine and news, and websites. Sources are culled from over 130 Gale reference mainstays such as the Encyclopedia of World Biography, Dictionary of American Biography, Newsmakers, Historic World Leaders, Contemporary Musicians, Contemporary Authors and Contemporary Black Biography. Thousands of newspaper and magazine articles add value to the database, drawing from Time, U.S. News & World Report, the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and over 300 other sources.

There are many ways into this database that might be taken advantage of in a school setting. "Category Browse" allows searchers to click through famous people organized by broad categories such as athletes, current world leaders, Hispanic Americans, notable women, or world explorers. Students who don't know particular names of scientists, for example, may find worthy research topics through such this kind of browsing. "Biographical Facts Search" allows advanced searching by any combination of occupation, nationality, gender, and birth or death year, allowing students and teachers to target searches that meet the very specific needs of an assignment.

Because this database includes many titles from the U*X*L backlist, it will serve both middle school and high school at a variety of reading levels. The breadth of subjects is astonishing, ranging from Aristotle to 50 Cent. A search for John Amaechi, a journeyman basketball player, yielded just a one-line biographical entry under "Brief Biographies," but under "Magazines and News," most of the dozen periodical articles explored the primary reason for his fame as the first professional basketball player to openly state that he is gay. The "Category Browse" could stand to be updated— Reggie Miller is included as a prominent basketball player in the short list under "athletes" while Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are not, for example—but this is a minor quibble with what would be a prized addition to any secondary school library.

— Doug Achterman