Who's Who directories provide the following information for most entries: full name, present position, birth date, names of family members, career highlights, titles of publications, current address, and sometimes telephone and/or fax numbers. These sources usually only list individuals who were living when the books were published. Additional specialized directories are available; ask a Reference Librarian for information.
You can search LUCIA, the library's online catalog, in either a command line or Telnet format or a Web format. The searches given here are described for the Telnet version of LUCIA. There are slight differences between searching the two versions of the catalog, but both interfaces search the same database.
To find biographical books about a certain person, search in LUCIA for the person as a subject, i.e. LINCOLN ABRAHAM. Browse through the subject headings to find the subheading which corresponds to your specific interests.
For autobiographical books by and about a certain person, search in LUCIA for persons as authors.
To combine terms for a different kind of search, try a Keyword search. In keyword searching, LUCIA will
look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those
records. Try a search like su biograph? and (su dictionar?) or su biograph? and (su encycloped?). The question
mark acts as a truncation symbol and tells LUCIA to search for all words starting with biograph: biography, biographical, etc.
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The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. Some of our indexes include:
Newspapers:
Obituaries can be good sources of biographical information.
One successful technique for finding biographical information on the Internet is to search for the artist's name as a phrase within quotation marks, for example, "Marcel Duchamp". This technique will not work in every search tool; you might want to consult the help screens offered by the various tools. It will work in AltaVista, which would be a good starting point. For a list of Internet search tools see the library's Search the Internet page listing some frequently-used search engines and indexes.
Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:
For brief background information on how to use some of the many available Internet search engines, see this guide.It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources, or this bibliography on Evaluation of Information Sources.
Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready reference, shelves behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Current issues; Level A
Periodical Back Files = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference; at end of classes in other collections
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