General Suggestions
1. If you need basic facts about a person, e.g., "When was Napoleon born?", check general encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Canadian Encyclopedia.
2. If you are unable to find simple biographical information in general encyclopedias, or you need more information than provided, check one of the specialized biographical reference books listed on this page.
3. For highly detailed information, search OMNI on the library's homepage for books on the person. Here are some suggested searches:
- Biography AND canada
- Albert Einstein AND biography
- Economists AND biography
- Artists AND biography
- Women AND biography
4. It is important to remember that biographical information may not be available for all individuals. In these cases, information about an author can sometimes be found by checking the preface or introduction of an author's work for scholarly background and academic achievements. Perform an author search in OMNI by typing in the last name followed by the first name.
Databases | General and International Biography | Canadian Biography | Historical | Women | Arts and Humanities | Social Sciences | Science and Engineering | Obituaries | Autobiography, Nicknames, Eponyms, Pseudonyms | eBooks | Quotations | Websites
Databases
- CPI.Q - for Canadian subjects
- Literary Sources
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - for British subjects
- Nexis Uni - Includes the Who's Who books.
Specialized Biographical Reference Books
Covid 19 Update: For Print Material: Curbside pickup and mail delivery
General and International Biography
- Encyclopedia of World Biography (1998-2007)
Canadian Biography
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography For Canadian subjects who died before 1930.
Historical Biography
- Dictionary of Contemporary World History From 1900 to the Present Day
- Who's Who in the Classical World
- Rise of the Medieval World, 500-1300: A Biographical Dictionary
- Renaissance and Reformation, 1500-1620: A Biographical Dictionary
- Who's who in contemporary gay and lesbian history from World War II to the present day
Women
- Concise Dictionary of Women Artists
- A Historical Dictionary of British Women
- Native American Women a Biographical Dictionary
Arts and Humanities
- Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online
- Literary Bioraphy: An Introduction
- Writing lives : biography and textuality, identity and representation in early modern England
- Oxford Music Online
- The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers
Social Sciences
- Fifty Key Thinkers in Psychology
- Oxford Dictionary of Political Biography Who's Who in Twentieth-Century World Politics
- Hutchinson Encyclopedia of Modern Political Biography
Science and Engineering
- Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography
- Scientists, mathematicians, and inventors lives and legacies : an encyclopedia of people who changed the world
- Who's Who in Science and Engineering
Obituaries
Note: When a famous person dies, newspapers treat the event as a news story and you can find these by searching in our full-text newspaper databases. Regular obituaries or death notice are considered paid advertisements and are therefore not included.
Some historical news databases have obituaries for non-famous people as well as famous ones.
Tip: whether you are searching for a famous person or a not famous person, it would be easiest to find the obituary if you have the date of death or even the month or year of death.
Autobiography / Nicknames / Eponyms / Pseudonyms
- New Dictionary of Eponyms
- The Memoir and the Memoirist Reading and Writing Personal Narrative
- On Life-Writing
Ebooks
Do a search for "biography" in the following eBook sources
Quotations
Websites
- Australian Dictionary of Biography
- BBC History: Historical Figures
- Biography.com
- Biography and People (Library and Archives Canada)
- Chambers Reference Online Premium
- Nobel Prize
- Presidents of the United States
- Welsh Biography Online
- Who Knew Whom - Maps relationships and connections between "culturally-significant" individuals.
