Biopics, The Biography Channel, Biography.com – we want to know the history of people’s lives. The major events, affiliations, stories. We want an accurate account of a person’s life, and often we want it all or only have the time for it in thirty seconds. So, it’s a good thing that we have the new tool, Biographies.net.
I Really Want To Know, Who Are You?
Biographies.net is a free online reference tool, a growing collection of biographies. Search people’s names for biographical and historical information, or learn about famous (and not-so-famous) figures. Find people by entering their full name or just the first letter if you can’t quite remember. Browse individuals by categories such as: businessperson, inventor, organizational founder, entrepreneur, and more.
Each entry includes a birth date (and date of death where applicable), educational and family information, nationality, and professional history. This information is listed separately from any text, so readers can grasp each detail readily. Of course, a brief narrative provides some contextual information and highlights the subject’s noteworthy life events or accomplishments.
Biographies.net does an excellent job of showcasing essential information. In the age of exhaustive records, social networks and profile proliferation, Biographies is somewhat of a throwback, refreshing in its clean minimalist style.
Not that the site skimps on juicy facts. For example, as someone who has studied poetry, it was a little embarrassing to realize that I didn’t know E .E. Cummings’ real name. (I know, you’re dying for this information). It’s Edward Estlin Cummings, made plain to see in the very first sentence. And, a wonderful quote by him to take away: “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
For the curious, visitors can read random biographies or biographies of those whose birthdays fall on the current date. Biographies.net also solicits biographies in its quest to become the largest collection of biographies on the web. So, if a person of interest isn’t in the database yet, share your knowledge.
A Scholar’s Best Friend
It would be easy to gloss over, but at the bottom of each entry on Biographies.net there is a citation. Available in MLA, Chicago, or APA style! This is a brilliant feature. As anyone who has ever done any research might tell you, formatting citation sources properly will devour time. Biographies eliminates this tedious chore for the fastidious scholar, and the website should win a devoted following for this detail alone.
Biographies.net is the latest resource to join the Stands4 Network collection of online reference tools. Stands4 is quickly becoming to reference what Wikipedia is to general knowledge – the go-to source. Beside biographic entries, Stands4 offers great tools for finding zip codes, abbreviations, symbols, synonyms, definitions, conversions, quotes, rhymes and more.
The search function could improve when it comes to matching names not entered exactly, and the database has holes at the moment, but the tool is young and I suspect that it will prove to be the equal of other Stands4 tools that I’ve used. When you want basic information fast, Stands4 Network delivers the goods efficiently.
