Loughborough University 17th June 2009 Introduction & Overview Starting points for students and lecturers Research Theme articles How other academics are using the ODNB

Loughborough University 17th June 2009 Introduction & Overview

This is the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography home page. The Oxford DNB provides over 56,000 biographies of anyone who was anyone in British history, from the Romans to the 21st century. From film stars to physicists, landed gentry to local heroes, and murderers to millionaires, all human life is here.

john dryden Search for a person by typing their name into the Quick Search box at the top right.

You can find a list of Dryden’s contemporaries by using the Browse tab at the top of the screen and putting the list in Birth date order.

The Search People facility is useful for compiling lists of people…

This will give a list of people who had a connection with Loughborough and who were involved in literature and journalism in the 19th century.

Use the Search References facility, to, for example compile a list of biographies that use the letters of Charles Dickens as source material.

Loughborough University 17th June 2009 2. Starting points for students and lecturers

ODNB includes concise and rounded biographies of the great writers, written by specialist scholars. In many cases the ODNB entries are distillations of a lifetime’s research. Entries on major figures are sufficiently detailed to cover background, private life, reputation, legacy, and reception of works. The ODNB is good for students getting to grips with an author for the first time and/or lecturers needing historical and biographical context for a subject’s work.

Peter Holland (University of Notre Dame) on William Shakespeare (35,000 words)

Rosemary Ashton on George Eliot (12,000) words

Updates since 2004 have extended coverage into very recent past: for example, entries on W.G. Sebald, Bernice Rubens, Douglas Adams, Thom Gunn and D.J Enright, as well as well-known literary scholars including Lorna Sage, David Daichies and Philip Hobsbaum.

Loughborough University 17th June 2009 Research

In each article, the left-hand column offers links to accredited external sources for further research: for example, the Royal Historical Society bibliography.

RHS bibliographies are free to access and have links back to ODNB subjects for further reading.

ODNB also offers links in this panel to the National Register of Archives (for details of primary sources relating to a person) and the NPG, for more on images of the person.

Loughborough University 17th June 2009 Theme articles

Since 2004 the ODNB has been extended online with three annual updates (January, May and October). Updates have added 2000 new subjects now up to the year 2005 and also 500 Theme articles. Theme articles are an attempt to treat lives considered singly in the main dictionary within their correct historical context. In short, Themes make connections between people because in real life most of these figures acted collaboratively.

Themes include essays on, for example, the Angry Young Men…

Group articles provide another example of how a student or lecturer can take their studies further, beyond the original article. In this case they bind the person into the real-life networks in which they took part and illustrate connections that existed with other subjects in the ODNB. As with biographical articles, group essays are written by specialists (e.g. Movement group is written by Blake Morrison, the Lunar Society by Jenny Uglow) and are intended to provide a comprehensive listing of members, how they came together, what they achieved, and the importance of the group’s activities. …and the Patrons of the Mermaid tavern.

In addition to groups, the ODNB Themes offer ‘reference lists’ In addition to groups, the ODNB Themes offer ‘reference lists’. Whereas group essays connect people at a particular point in time, lists bring together people over time who held a common position: (for example, prime ministers, lord chief justices, foreign secretaries). Very useful if you want to check who was prime minister in 1889 or who succeeded Andrew Bonar Law into No.10. And because lists link back to the main biographical articles, you can read on about what an individual achieved in that position.

These lists can be useful in fitting historical events to people: for example, who was governor-general of India at the time of the Amritsar massacre (1919) and what was his response to the crisis?

Loughborough University 17th June 2009 How other academics are using the ODNB

In September 2008 the THES included an article by Alex Danchev, professor of international relations, Nottingham, on using the ODNB online as a teaching resource: This comprised: reading ODNB entries on modern prime ministers; comparing ODNB entries with those in the first DNB (available online via ‘DNB archive’ link): how have reputations changed; how do biographical approaches change? The same approach works well for literary figures.

We also have a handful of other classroom uses in the University area of our Learning Resources site.

Further training materials and a schedule of Webex sessions can be found at http://www.oup.com/uk/academic/online/librarians/#training or by contacting: mark.turner@oup.com