University at Buffalo: Reporter

ELECTRONIC HIGHWAYS
Biographical Information on the Web


Almost everyone finds the lives of the rich and famous intriguing. If you enjoy Biography on A&E's cable television channel visit the program's Web site at http://www.biography.com/. The online version of the show celebrates the diversity of history's cast of characters-both famous and infamous. The site has a database containing 15,000 biographies that can be searched by name. It also has an online message board which provides a public forum for exchanging ideas and opinions on famous people. A schedule for upcoming episodes of the TV show is also provided, as well as an online gift shop, a weekly biography quiz, and selected profiles and interviews from Biography magazine.

Notable Citizens of Planet Earth (http://www.tiac.net/users/parallax/) is a searchable biographical dictionary with over 18,000 entries for rich, famous and historically important figures. Information contained in the dictionary includes birth and death dates, professions, positions held, literary and artistic works and other achievements. The dictionary is searchable by name, date and keywords. This site received a "Best of Europe Online Award" in 1996.

Biography and Notable Citizens of Planet Earth are great places for biography buffs, but they are only two of several hundred sites on the Web specializing in information about famous people. For an extensive listing of biographical sites check out the "People" section on Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/People/) and H-GIG Persons (http://www.ucr.edu/h-gig/hist-topics/perso.html/).

Also, don't forget about Biography Index and the Biography and Genealogy Master Index, which can be found on the University Libraries' BISON II (http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/). While these sources may not be fulltext, they are very comprehensive. Whether you are looking for information on a minor 19th-century novelist, a biography of Buffalo's Jimmy Griffin or a profile of a company's CEO, then Biography Index and Biography and Genealogy Master Index are the reference tools for you.

For assistance in connecting to the World Wide Web via UB computer accounts, contact the Computing Center's Help Desk at 645-3542.

­ Gemma DeVinney and Don Hartman, University Libraries


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