The Biography and Genealogy Master Index (BGMI) was a printed reference index, and is currently a proprietary database published by the Gale Research Company. The database indexes more than 15 million individuals, living and deceased, covered in more than 1700 biographical reference sources. [1]
The BGMI was initially published in print in 1975 under the editorship of M.C. Herbert and B. McNeil. The second print edition of eight volumes was published in 1980. [2] The database version of BGMI indexes names exactly as they are spelled in the source indexes. Searches cover all volumes and supplements of the print publication, and returns an alphabetized list of all names retrieved. [3]
The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives.
The Encyclopaedia Judaica is a 22-volume English-language encyclopedia of the Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel. It covers diverse areas of the Jewish world and civilization, including Jewish history of all eras, culture, holidays, language, scripture, and religious teachings. As of 2010, it had been published in two editions accompanied by a few revisions.
Neue Deutsche Biographie is a biographical reference work. It is the successor to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. The 26 volumes published thus far cover more than 22,500 individuals and families who lived in the German language area.
Current Biography is an American monthly magazine published by the H. W. Wilson Company of New York City, a publisher of reference books, that appears every month except December. Current Biography contains profiles of people in the news and includes politicians, athletes, businessmen, and entertainers. Published since 1940, the articles are annually collected into bound volumes called Current Biography Yearbook. A December issue of the magazine is not published because the staff works on the final cumulative volume for the year. Articles in the bound volumes correct any mistakes that may have appeared in the magazine and may include additional relevant information about the subject that became available since publication of the original article. The work is a standard reference source in American libraries and the publisher keeps in print the older volumes. Wilson also issues cumulative indexes to the set, and an online version is available as a subscription database.
Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, west of Detroit. It has been a division of Cengage since 2007.
The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society is a non-profit institution located at 36 West 44th Street in New York City. Founded in 1869, it is the second-oldest genealogical society in the United States, and the only statewide genealogical society in New York state. Its purpose is to collect and make available information on genealogy, biography, and history, particularly in relation to New Yorkers. The Society also publishes periodicals and books, conducts educational programs, maintains a Committee on Heraldry, and offers other services.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia (NCE) is a multi-volume reference work on Roman Catholic history and belief edited by the faculty of The Catholic University of America. The NCE was originally published by McGraw-Hill in 1967. A second edition, which gave up the articles more reminiscent of a general encyclopedia, was published in 2002.
Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, commonly known by its acronym RILM, is a nonprofit organization that offers digital collections and advanced tools for locating research on all topics related to music. Its mission is "to make this knowledge accessible to research and performance communities worldwide….to include the music scholarship of all countries, in all languages, and across all disciplinary and cultural boundaries, thereby fostering research in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences." Central to RILM's work and mission is the international bibliography of scholarship relating to all facets of music research.
Guide to Reference, published in 2008 as the online successor to Guide to Reference Books, was a selective guide to the best print and online reference sources. An editorial team of reference librarians and subject experts selected and annotated some 16,000 entries, which were organized by subject. It was a subscription database, published by the American Library Association, and was updated on an ongoing basis. It was intended as a resource for libraries when answering reference questions, planning library instruction, identifying items to purchase, and training staff.
The Dictionary of Scientific Biography is a scholarly reference work that was published from 1970 through 1980 by publisher Charles Scribner's Sons, with main editor the science historian Charles Gillispie, from Princeton University. It consisted of sixteen volumes. It is supplemented by the New Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Both these publications are included in a later electronic book, called the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
Crockford's Clerical Directory (Crockford) is the authoritative directory of Anglican clergy and churches in the United Kingdom and Ireland, containing details of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish benefices and churches, and biographies of around 26,000 clergy in those countries as well as the Church of England Diocese in Europe in other countries. It was first issued in 1858 by John Crockford, a London printer and publisher.
Journal of the Physical Society of Japan (JPSJ) is a monthly, peer reviewed, scientific journal published by the Physical Society of Japan (JPS). It was first published in July 1946. The editor-in-chief was A. Kawabata until August 2010. The impact factor for JPSJ in 2017 is 1.485, according to Journal Citation Reports.
The Web of Science is a paid-access platform that provides access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedings, and other documents in various academic disciplines. It was originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. It is currently owned by Clarivate.
Contemporary Authors is a reference work that has been published by Gale since 1962. The work provides short biographies and bibliographies of contemporary and near-contemporary writers and is a major source of information on over 116,000 living and deceased authors from around the world. The work is a standard in libraries and has been honored by the American Library Association as a distinguished reference title.
John Peter Wearing is an Anglo-American theatre historian and professor, who has written numerous books and articles about nineteenth and twentieth-century drama and theatre, including The Shakespeare Diaries: A Fictional Autobiography, published in 2007. He has also written and edited well-received books on George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Wing Pinero, extensive reference series on the London theatre from 1890 to 1980, and theatrical biographies, among other subjects. As a professor of English literature, Wearing has specialised in Shakespeare and modern drama.
The Dictionary of Literary Biography is a specialist biographical dictionary dedicated to literature. Published by Gale, the 375-volume set covers a wide variety of literary topics, periods, and genres, with a focus on American and British literature.
BIOSIS Previews is an English-language, bibliographic database service, with abstracts and citation indexing. It is part of Clarivate Analytics Web of Science suite. BIOSIS Previews indexes data from 1926 to the present.
The Bibliography of Music Literature is an international bibliography of literature on music. It considers all kind of music and includes both current and older literature. Since 1968, the BMS editorial staff has also been working as the German committee for the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM). The bibliography includes monographs, master’s theses and doctoral dissertations, articles and reviews from journals, Festschriften, conference proceedings, yearbooks, anthologies, and essays from critical reports. It contains printed media as well as online resources, data media, sound recordings, audiovisual media, and microforms. Each record provides the title in the original language, full bibliographic data, a keyword index, and mostly an abstract. Currently, BMS online has more than 315,000 records of literature on music. It is supplemented by the OLC-SSG Musicology, which incorporates the contents of some more 150 music journals from 1993 onward. BMS online participates actively on Virtual Library of Musicology (ViFaMusik), the central gateway for music and musicology in Germany.
Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Throughout the Ages is a biographical dictionary of women. Published in 2006 by Yorkin Publications, the three-volume Dictionary was intended to redress the paucity of information on women available in other biographical dictionaries. Editors Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer found that typically five percent or less of the text of such works was devoted to women.
Book Review Digest is a reference work by H. W. Wilson Company that compiles recent book reviews. Printed monthly with annual compendia, it digests American and English periodicals from 1905 to the present day. Before the Internet, Book Review Digest was a significant reference tool and bibliographic aid used by the American public and librarians alike to find current literature. An online edition of the collection is offered in two subscription products: Book Review Digest Retrospective (1905–1982) and Book Review Digest Plus.