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The Charleston
Advisor, May 30, 2007
Reference
Reviews, Volume 19, No. 5, July 2005
School
Library Journal, June 2005
Choice, 2005
ONLINE,
July/August 2002
Media & Methods
Reference Books Bulletin /
Booklist
Choice, 2002
NetConnect
Library
Journal
School Library Journal
Information Highways: Hot Bytes
Reviewed by The Charleston Advisor,
May 30, 2007
"Compared to its competitors, BRB is one of
the front-runners as a biographical reference resource....One of the
products greatest strengths is its ability to provide all of the content
for a person under one entry and allow the user to explore all of the
results in an easy to use format....The user interface is pleasing, with
pronunciation keys and alternate name cross-references available in some
full records....The advanced search page greatly impressed me with its
allowance for a multitude of searching options....This is a valuable
product with large amounts of information....I found no major omissions
and was amazed at some of the obscure results I did find."
Reviewed by Casey Deuvel, MLIS, Minnesota State
University, Mankato, MN
Reviewed by
Reference Reviews, Volume 19, No. 5, July 2005
Extending from antiquity to the present,
this is indeed an immense collection of biographical information.
Biography Reference Bank merges Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated
and full-text articles, images, and abstracts from the other Wilson
databases. Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated currently consists
of more than 30,000 images and links to full-text articles from
biographical reference resources from Wilson and those licensed from other
publishers. Biography Index provides citations to more than 3,000
periodicals indexed by Wilson and approximately 2,500 books of individual
and collective biography. Thus, this newly enhanced product now links to
biographical profiles, feature articles, interviews, essays, obituaries,
book reviews, performance reviews, and speeches in nearly all of the
Wilson Web databases, including Current Biography and the world
artists, authors, composers, songwriters, musicians, and filmmakers series
and the Junior Authors and Illustrators Series.
New additions to Biography Reference
Bank include titles licensed from Oxford University, James Clarke, and
the Congressional Directory. They join reference resources from Houghton
Mifflin, Grove's, Garland, Greenwood, Oryx, Harvard University Press,
Chambers Harrap, and Fitzroy Dearborn. These additions bring to over
500,000 the number of written entries currently in Biography Reference
Bank. Retrospective coverage goes back to 1984 and the database is
updated daily.
Biography Reference Bank is now
powered by a new version of WilsonWeb, the publisher’s search and
retrieval service. The new version offers more effective searching and
retrieval potential, including a dedicated subject thesaurus and full-text
searching, customization options for both users and administrators, and
WilsonLink, SFX-powered technology linking Wilson citations to subscribing
libraries’ OPACs and licensed databases.
WilsonWeb is uncluttered and easy to use.
Help screens assist the user with basic and advanced searching,
customizing the display, constructing a query, and using natural language,
Boolean operators, stop words, truncation, and wildcards. Basic searching
allows for natural language and Boolean searching. The advanced search
options are by keyword, name, profession/activity, gender…place of origin,
birth and death dates, and title of works. The user may also choose either
the browse or thesaurus selection when searching. All-Smart Search assigns
a relevancy ranking to each record depending on which field in the
citation it finds the search term or phrase and returns only records that
feature all the terms searched. The capability to search by category is a
great advantage when using this product. A simple search by the category
Profession/Activity—for example "Nobel Laureates"—produces a list of all
winners of the prize. The essays are well written and the images are of
excellent quality.
In most cases, Biography Reference Bank
provides a variety of biographical material on an individual. For
example, the entry for Nobel Peace Prize winner Emily Greene Balch offers
resource links to Current Biography, Nobel Prize Winners, American
Reformers, and Notable American Women. Further links are available to
citations for books and articles with Balch as the subject, and books by
Balch. The amount of material on this year’s winner for literature,
Elfriede Jelinek, is impressive. Articles, reviews, and analytical essays
are among the links available on this author, before now little known
outside of academia….
Biography Reference Bank is still an
excellent biographical reference tool and is highly recommended for public
and academic libraries.
Reviewed by Sheila L. Darrow, Central State
University, Wilberforce, Ohio
Reviewed by:
School Library Journal, June
2005
Biography Reference Bank (Gr 8 Up)
contains information (average length 1,500 to 2,000 words) on more than
500,000 people from antiquity to the present with links to 175,000+
related full-text articles. More than 30,000 images bring the profiles to
life. BRB brings together more than 50 Wilson titles including Biography
Index, Current Biography, the World Authors Series, Nobel Prize Winners,
World Artists, World Film Directors, and American Reformers. Also included
are 70,000 licensed profiles from titles of other major publishers:
Chambers Harrap (1 title); Fitzroy Dearborn (12); Garland Publishing (8);
Greenwood (14); Harvard University Press (1); Helicon (1); Houghton
Mifflin (4); James Clarke & Co. (2); Oryx (12); Oxford Publishing, Ltd.
(40); and Oxford University Press (9, with 5,000 new biographies from
American National Biography).
Sources include more than 3,000
periodicals, some 2,500 current books, and other biographical material.
Subjects represent all fields and nationalities. The database is
searchable by name; profession; place of origin; gender; ethnicity;
birth/death dates, day, and year; titles of works; and keyword. As in
Current Biography Illustrated, there are three search options. "Advanced
Search" is the default screen and allows students to customize their
searches using numerous parameters. "Basic" works best with personal
names, while "Browse" allows students to enter words, terms, or phrases
and then choose the applicable field (16 choices) from the drop-down menu.
Displayed results can be sorted by date instead of by relevancy, and can
be customized. As with other Wilson databases, CBI allows users to print,
e-mail, and save, and it features document type, search history, document
description, limiting capabilities, All SmartSearch Technology, and open
URL compliancy.
Because BRB includes a daunting
number of entries of various types, searches using the latest version now
retrieve a single master record. This record, in turn, features hotlinks
to each category of material available: original Wilson profiles, profiles
licensed from other reference publishers, magazine articles, and records
of books by and about the subject. From the page for each category, users
can click to the citation of interest.
Biography Reference Bank is the
mother lode for biographies because it draws from every article about any
individual from any of the WilsonWeb databases— biographical profiles,
feature articles, interviews, essays, book reviews, performance reviews,
speeches, or obituaries. The breadth and depth of information included in
BRB is awesome and the number of color photographs included is more than
in any other biography database. I tried to stump the search engine by
looking up about 50 recent newsmakers (Pope John Paul II, Prince Charles,
etc.), and in every case I retrieved relevant, current information.
Biography Reference Bank is a
powerful database, which may overwhelm some students. Request a free trial
of both Current Biography Illustrated and Biography Reference Bank and see
which one fits your students" curricular needs.
Review from: Choice,
February 2005
Part of the WilsonWeb service, Biography Reference Bank
offers over 500,000 biographies from ancient times to the present. It
indexes full-text articles from all the H.W. Wilson collective biographies
(e.g., Current Biography, World Authors). Biographies are retrieved in
response to a search link to articles indexed in Wilson publications
(e.g., Biography Index, only from 1984 onwards). BRB is therefore an
invaluable online resource for biography. The work's international scope
is a major attraction, as is its comprehensive content. Students
interested in finding out about recent Nobel Prize winners can fwd a
wealth of data, including links to some full-text reports of the award
announcements; for example, searching for Peace Prize laureate Wangari
Maathai it retrieves a Current Biography entry and links to articles and
full-text sources. The interface works smoothly…. A browse feature allows
multiple ways to search the database (e.g., by gender, place of origin).
Searching Northern Ireland as a place of origin retrieves more than 40
hits, including Kenneth Branagh, who is not always associated with
Northern Ireland. Icons at the top of the main window allow searches to be
limited to biographies and obituaries or to entries with images. This is a
highly usable, content-rich resource.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. All libraries, especially
public, school, and undergraduate.
Review
from: ONLINE,
July/August 2002
HW Wilson's Biography
Reference Bank (BRB) has been enhanced to retrieve data from the full line
of WilsonWeb databases, making any article about any individual on any
WilsonWeb database accessible. These articles include biographical
profiles, features, interviews, essays, book reviews, performance reviews,
speeches, poems, and obituaries. Any name in Wilson's name authority file
is accessible, with 308,000 currently searchable. BRB expands with
new coverage four times a week.
http://www.onlinemag.net/jul02/News.htm
Review
from: Media
& Methods, Mar/Apr 2002 issue
Biography Reference Bank is a comprehensive
Web-based database offering biographies and photographs from the Wilson
Biographies Plus Illustrated database and periodicals content from the
Biography Index Plus database. It also offers full-text articles,
abstracts and citations from other H. W. Wilson databases.
Periodicals are selected from all
subject areas represented by the extensive H. W. Wilson Company databases.
Biographical subjects indexed range from antiquity to the present and
represent all fields and nationalities. The biographies can be searched by
name, profession, title, place of origin, gender, race/ethnicity, titles
of works, date of birth, date of death or keyword.
The 2,000-word biographical profiles
are linked to related full-text articles, abstracts and images from
magazines and journals. The database includes daily updates to magazine
articles, annual updates and licensed profiles from other leading
publishers.
The Biography Reference Bank is
a must-have for any library.
Review
from: Reference Books Bulletin
/ Booklist, November 1, 2001
Biography Reference Bank.
Internet database. Pricing from 2,595. (Last accessed September 12, 2001)
Biography Reference Bank (BRB)
is actually a compilation of two Wilson databases- Biography Index Plus
and Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated. Biography Index
Plus consists of citations to approximately 2,500 books of individual
and collective biography and citations from the 3,000 journals indexed in
the Wilson databases. More than 1.450 journals include full-text content.
Adding Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated fattens BRB with more
than 28,000 photographs and the full text from more than 100 Wilson
biographical reference resources, including all volumes from the
publisher's well-known and trusted Current Biography. BRB also has
material licensed from ABC-CLIO, Fitzroy Dearborn, and others. Coverage is
international and includes both the living and the dead for a combined
total of more than 195,000 individuals-and growing.
Users can choose from three search
screens-Browse, Search, and Search Plus. All three search screens load
fast. In Browse, a pop-down box enables the user to select from 27 various
indexes. The Subject of Biography index is the default.
When utilizing the second type of
search, simply titled Search, users type in their terms and then select
from the following: Words Anywhere, Subject, Title, or Author. Subject is
the default. A subject search for Buster Keaton (word order and case do
not matter when searching by subject) retrieves 20 records. Results from
Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated are listed first, followed by
results from Biography Index Plus. Clicking on the citation for one
of the full-text entries displays a hefty 15-page article from World
Film Directors, Volume I (Wilson, 1987). A picture is included as are
links to More Information and More Images. Results can be e-mailed
(without pictures), printed, or saved to a disk.
The third type of search screen,
SearchPlus, provides several advanced search features. Two text boxes
linked together by select- able Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) offer
intuitive advanced searching. Limit features include Date of Birth,
Profession/Genre, Place of Origin, Gender. and Ethnic Background. The
Profession! Genre category is extensive. A pop-down menu offers choices
from more than 1,000 professions.
Those considering BRB should also
review the Gale product Biography Resource Center, which combines
80 Gale Group biographical resources with more than 250 full-text
periodicals. While Biography
Resource Center covers
more individuals, Biography Reference Bank pulls content from more
resources-in particular, many more periodical titles-and is highly
recommended for academic and public libraries.
Review
from: CHOICE, 2001sup
H.W. Wilson continues its tradition of reliable,
quality print resources with this online offering. Building on the
strength of its biographical reference books and periodical indexes, BRB
"... combines the complete content of Wilson Biographies Plus
Illustrated (full text of 95,000-plus biographies and obituaries) and the
complete and enhanced content of Biography Index Plus (Biography Index
enhanced with abstracts and full text where available)."
International in scope, BRB includes individuals from antiquity to the
present. As of May 6, 2001, Biographies Plus had been updated on January 8
and Biography Index Plus included July 1984 through March 2001. No Web
link takes users beyond the print counterparts.
They will find BRB easy to search using either
Browse (alphabetical list of terms by field), Search (search by name,
keyword, subject, author or title; limit by year), or Search Plus (limit
by date of birth, profession/genre, place of origin, gender or ethnic
background). The navigation toolbox is always available. Options for
Previous 10, Next 10, Print, Save, Email, Show Marked, Citation Display,
and Full Display are at the top of the results list; a "top"
marker is included at the bottom of each screen. Records can be displayed
in Brief, Citation, or Full view.
It is cumbersome in Full view not to be able to
progress to the next record without returning to the result list. Help
screens are plentiful and easy to understand. Terms assigned to describe
the subject's profession are sometimes misleading (e.g., Anne Tyler's
professions included information scientist and librarian, based on a
one-year stint as a Russian bibliographer at Duke). The obvious rival is
Gale's Biography Resource Center (CH, Nov'99). For general readers,
undergraduates, and graduate students.
--- J. Brewer, Murray State University
Copyright 1999 American Library Association. Contact
permissions@ala-choice.org for permission to reproduce or redistribute.
Review
from: NetConnect, May 2001
Gail Golderman & Bruce Connolly
rate the most notable general biography sites
Content & Searchability: The
Wilson Company twists the dial to "11" with the publication of
Biography Reference Bank, a mammoth 170,000-name resource that merges the
company's Biography Index Plus with its Wilson Biographies Plus
Illustrated.
The Biography Index Plus component consists of a
bibliographic database that integrates citations to biographical materials
indexed in the various Wilson database products from more than 3000
periodicals. The database is supplemented with citations to individual
biographies and book-length collections of biographical articles. All
subject areas and nationalities are represented, with personalities from
antiquity to the present. Citations in the Plus version are enhanced with
abstracts and the full text of articles where available. Indexing coverage
begins in July 1984.
The Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated piece
contributes in excess of 95,000 biographical entries and obituaries
(26,000 of them illustrated) to the mix, including full text from Wilson's
World Author Series, Nobel Prize Winners, World Artists, World Film
Directors, American Reformers, and 60 years of Current Biography. The
homegrown Wilson resources are further supplemented with additional
full-text titles from publishers such as Grove and Oryx. In all, more than
60 different titles feed into Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated, and the
company's promotional materials project a database of 300,000 names by
summer 2001.
The first thing that strikes you when connecting to
WilsonWeb is how clean and inviting the welcome screen is. You check the
database(s) you intend to search and proceed by choosing the SearchPlus
(advanced), Search, or Browse mode. A step-by-step, 74-word "QuickTour"
linked to the main page provides all the information needed to get
started.
When we looked at the site in February 2001, the
SearchPlus screen indicated that the most recent updates took place on
January 8 for Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated and February 8 for
Biography Index Plus. Via pull-down menus, the searcher may specify his or
her terms be searched in the default keyword index ("Words
Anywhere") or more precisely in the Subject, Title, Author,
Journal/Source, or ISSN/ISBN fields. Boolean operations between search
statements are handled by clicking a check box. Search results may be
restricted to full-text and/or peer-reviewed sources only. Additional
limits include publication type (All, Autobiography, Biography, Books,
Exhibit, Interview, or Obituary) and date ranges. The full-text and
peer-review limits may also be imposed after search results are posted.
The Search Results screen allows the searcher to opt for
a citation or full display. Results may be marked, saved, printed, or
e-mailed, and full-text options include HTML and PDF. When displayed, the
full bibliographic record includes hyperlinks to the authors, specific
journal issue, and descriptors, facilitating further exploration. Links
pursued in this way are added to the search History.
WilsonWeb designers have thoughtfully situated
navigation bars at the right side and bottom of every page, so revising a
search strategy simply requires clicking on the History navigation button.
New search terms may be added or previous ones combined or removed by
checking the search statement number and clicking the appropriate button.
Context-sensitive Help is also called up via the
Navigation bar, with links to the full set of online documentation linked
to each Help screen. Wilson publishes a 16-page Quick Reference Guide for
WilsonWeb, which is posted on the main Wilson homepage in the Technical
Support area.
Biography Reference Bank employs all the standard
WilsonWeb search capabilities--wildcards and truncation, Boolean (AND,
NOT, and OR) and proximity operators (IN to specify a particular field;
NEAR to search terms within the same sentence and to specify how far apart
they appear; and WITH to find two terms in the same field), nesting, and
limiting by language and publication date. The savvy searcher has all the
necessary tools for achieving a high degree of precision in his or her
search strategies.
The basic Search mode employs a one-line search template
and eliminates searching in the Journal/Source and ISSN/ISBN fields. The
full-text and peer-review check boxes also go away, as does the search by
Publication Type feature. Browse mode, in fact, offers superior options
for refining a simple search--things like full-text only, peer-reviewed
journal, and record type as well as race, gender, language, and
century--but they cannot be combined, and a complex search is beyond the
capabilities of Browse mode.
Price: The single-user annual
rate for Biography Reference Bank is $2,595. Call the company for
networking prices and group rates. Wilson also grants free 30-day trials
of its products to institutions.
Who Needs It? Anyone searching
for biographical information is a potential Biography Reference Bank user.
Public libraries and school media centers at all levels are the most
obvious candidates for subscriptions, given that the full-text periodical
articles tend to come from mass media sources. But undergraduates
frequently seek information on contemporary newsmakers, too, and when you
consider that many of the citations from Biography Index Plus originated
in communications reported in science and technology and in the scholarly
literature of the social sciences and humanities, it is hard to think of
Biography Reference Bank as unsuited to any type of library.
Review
from: Library Journal April 2, 2001
Biography Reference Bank
completely combines the contents of two other Wilson electronic products:
Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated and Biography Index Plus. In this source
you'll find the full text of more than 95,000 biographies and obituaries,
26,000 photographs of individual subjects, and a host of bibliographic
citations (with some abstracts and full text) of relevant material in
periodicals indexed by other Wilson databases. Content comes from more than
100 H.W. Wilson biographical reference books, including Current Biography,
American Reformers, Nobel Prize Winners, World Author Series, and World Film
Directors. Subjects covered in the database range from antiquity to the
present, and coverage is global.
The main advantage the file offers over print
is the ability to search by a host of criteria besides a mere alphabetical
listing by name. Here you can search by profession, title, place of origin,
gender, race/ethnicity, titles of works, date of birth, date of death,
keyword, presence of images, and combinations of these.
The WilsonWeb interface is delightfully
uncluttered and easy to navigate, with an ever-present menu of the options
SearchPlus, Search, Browse, History, and Help. Why Search when you can
SearchPlus? is my philosophy, so I dove into SearchPlus to look for James
Wong Howe. I typed the name just like that and found four articles
immediately, all of which were clearly labeled as to source (and impressive
sources they were: 1976 obituary from Current Biography, 1943 biography from
Current Biography, an entry from Notable Asian Americans [Gale., 1995], and
the article "Lights! Camera! Stirfry!" from American Film, Vol.
11, Apr. 1986, p. 16ff.). That was easy.
So I tried a more ambitious search. Under
Profession/Genre I chose Filmmakers- (there was no entry for cameraman),
chose Male under Gender, and Asian under Ethnic Background. This located 66
entries, James Wong Howe among them, and is the kind of search BRB
was made for. Essays are well researched and written, the quality of images
is excellent, and the amount of reliable full text will pretty well knock
your (and your patrons') socks off.
Next I wanted to find the 19th-century
librarians in the database. A quick consult in Help gave me the truncation
information I needed: I plugged 18* into Year for Date of Birth, chose
Librarians from the Profession/Genre search, and found records for 16 folks.
Printing, saving to disc, and e-mailing are
all multistep processes, but that's not a bad thing for a file like this. In
re: printing: frankly, casual printing can bankrupt a budget and inadvertent
printing will anger patrons if they're paying for it. Directions for all
three functions are admirably easy to follow.
Is there anything I don't like? I couldn't
find it in the course of doing this review. An obvious product to compare
this file to is Gale's Biography Resource Center, which got raves in these
pages (Database&Disc Reviews, LJ 9/15/99). In making an acquisitions
decision between the two, you'll want to consider the contents of each--and
the Current Biography material makes this one especially attractive.
The bottom line: Biography
Reference Bank is highly recommended for all public, academic, and
special libraries: Wilson's made a wise move to consolidate Wilson
Biographies Plus Illustrated and Biography Index Plus into a single product.
Now if only we could get Gale and Wilson to combine their two megafiles for
the good of all!
-- Christine K. Oka, Research & Instruction
Svcs., Northeastern Univ., Boston
Review
from: School Library Journal, May 2001 issue
Wilson has combined their popular Biographies Plus Illustrated and
Biography Index Plus to produce a top of the line biographical
reference tool. It has the complete content of Biographies Plus
Illustrated, and an enhanced content version of Biography Index
Plus. Containing almost 200,000 entries and 100,000 images, it is the
second largest online biography database available (Gale Biography offers about
300,000 entries). Images are taken from the print version of Current
Biography, and all other Wilson databases such as Reader’s
Guide to Periodical Literature have been scanned for biographical
material. These are made available in PDF format in Biography Reference
Bank. BRB is searchable by name, profession, title, place
of origin, gender, race/ethnicity, titles of works, date of birth, date of
death, and keyword. "SearchPlus" provides a guided search that leads
users into narrowing the search. By using "Search," users can do a
Boolean search.
The "Browse" mode is somewhat difficult
to use and not all that intuitive, but is useful for searchers where the
spelling is unknown. You can also search by title of works, journal, source,
language, and many other fields. Once a list of articles is retrieved, students
are able to mark the articles of interest for saving, printing, or e-mailing. An
icon appears to designate full text, but there is no icon to indicate an image.
The brief display on this screen varies from article to article and may confuse
users. The list of articles would have benefited from an abstract for each of
them. When there is more than one citation for the subject, BRB
nicely organizes the information into categories like interviews, audiovisual
materials, and book reviews. There are hot links within the article, but only to
other Wilson material. Web links are lacking.
There is about a $750 price difference between BRB
and Biographies Plus Illustrated, but BRB has almost
twice as many entries and three times as many images. What Biographies
Plus Illustrated lacks is the material about people that appears in
periodicals indexed by other Wilson databases, additional selected periodicals,
current biographies of individuals, collected biographies, and incidental
articles from non-biographical books. BRB has more of a range of
people covered from antiquity to the present, and more representation of
occupations and nationalities.
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