Research Guides: COMP 111: The Nature of Narrative: Biographical Context

Searching for biographical information

You can gather biographical information for a variety of sources, including:

individual biographies (book length)
collective biographies (e.g. encyclopedias or dictionaries)
interviews (written and/or audio/film)
obituaries
news story / profile

Search strategies and the search tools you use will vary. You may use a library catalog to find book-length profiles, but would need a databaase to search for obituaries.

The search strategies on this page are only starting point - if you want to learn more, schedule an appointment with the Comparative Literature librarian.

Databases

Biography (Gale in Context) This link opens in a new window
Includes biographical profiles from reference sources, newspapers, magazines, and journals. Covers all time periods and areas of the world.

Reference Sources

Dictionary of Literary Biography
300+ volume set, each focusing either on a literary genre, or time period. Includes lengthy biographical essays authored by scholars in the field. Each essay includes a bibliography for further reading.
World Authors
Covering 1950-Present. Biographical articles on novelist, poets, dramatists. Includes bibliographies for further research.
Current Biography
Covering 1940-Present. Biographical profiles of 'people in the news'

Library Catalog Search Strategies

Library catalogs, such as the Williams Library Catalog and Worldcat will help you identify and locate biographical information published in book format:

full-length biographies
collections of biographical essays
biographical dictionaries
biographical encyclopedias

There are two prevalent search strategies when using a library catalog

Keyword searching
In this type of search, you can explore widely, experimenting with a variety of keywords
This casts a wide net and will help you get a sense of the scope of your topic

Suggested word combinations:
- Author's name + biography
- Literary genre + biography
- Country or region + biography
Subject searching
In this search, you use standardized subject terms assigned by the Library of Congress.
Each book in a library catalog is assigned subject headings. This allows you to run
thematic searches that retrieve items on the same subject.

To find subject headings, you can either:

Start by a keyword search (above), then get the subject headings from one of the books
Use keywords in the Subject field of the library catalog
Use pre-assigned subject headings, or construct them. Subject headings are specific, but their structure is logical, so you can use an existing subject heading and modify it. When searching for biographical materials, subject headings will include words such as "biography", "bio bibliography" either applied to an individual, a group, or a literary genre, for example: