biography resource center webinar
TRANSCRIPT
The Biography Resource Center homepage
Category Browse
• Supports what users do on the Web everyday—browse!
• 20+ categories
• Approximately 50-80 people in each group
• Selected by editors
• Most searched and iconic figures included
Navigation to open websites
Number of clicks to get to the open web has been
reduced from four to two!
In results lists: Date last updated and word counts for individual biographies
**Default order for biographies is date last updated
Marquis Who's Who results appear alongside results for Gale content
Magazine and News tab
Toolbox
Toolbox
Biography Resource Center’s comprehensiveness is unmatched 450,000+ biographies on 380,000+ people
101,000+ international entrants!
More than 300 periodicals…full-text only
27,000+ photos/portraits
19,000+ vetted web sites
Whether it’s latest news or new perspectives, the Biography Resource Center is relevant to a wide variety of research needs
Continuous updating--new/updated biographies added weekly, periodicals added daily
Nearly 123,000 new/updated biographies added in 2008! 58,000 in first half of 2009!
Powered by more than 50 years’ experience publishing biographies, BioRC provides authoritative content
135+ respected Gale biographical reference titles
1,100+ volumes
Print reference valued at more than $150,000!
New volumes and editions in our continuing biographical
series help broaden and deepen BioRC’s coverage—more than 50 volumes added
annually!
And, Biography Resource Center includes
biographies from popular biography titles and
subject encyclopedias like these
Coming soon:
African American Firsts in Science &
Technology
Contemporary Composers
Encyclopedia of Modern China
Also added to BioRC are biographical entries specially created for the database that have not appeared in print!
• 350 of these biographies added in 2008; 500 expected in 2009
• More than 5,000 over the life of the product
• Enable a quick response to covering individuals who are a part of current U.S. and world events
• Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, airline pilot of US Airways Flight 1549
• Taylor Swift, country singer
• Pete Souza, White House chief photographer
• Giuseppe Leanza, archbishop of Lilybaeum
• Michael Cera, actor, Superbad
• John Houghtaling, inventor of Magic Fingers
Notable 2008/2009 additions:
Biography Resource Center
• Highlights breadth and depth of database in a more conversational way than a dry guide
• Provides new content information
• Updated several times per week
New! Biography Resource Center blog: www.biographyresourcecenter.com
Biography Resource Center
And, BioRC includes nearly 3,000 Recent Update news briefs on more than 2,400 people, with new updates added twice per week.
JUST ADDED! Biographical Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North AfricaMore than 300 new biographies!
My book club is reading Ines of My
Soul by Isabel Allende. Where can I look to find out what inspired her writing?
I’m a teacher and want to point my students to resources on
figures in the news for an upcoming assignment. Where
can I find a biography and news articles on Iraqi prime minister
Nouri al-Maliki ?
Country music star Keith Urban is great! Where can I
write to him?
I need to find an African American
female scientist for a Black History Month project. Where do I
look?
My taxes are too high! How do I get in touch
with my local representative?
I need to write a paper about Louisa May
Alcott, author of Little Women. Where do I look to find out how much of her own life
was represented in her work?
I’m building an online course syllabus for an
American history class. How do I provide a direct link to biographies on individuals associated with the Bay of
Pigs invasion?
I found some great biographies on Stephen
Hawking in BioRC to help a student in the library, but
she needs to conduct more in-depth research. Can I find suggested further reading information in
BioRC?
• MARC records: Available on http://www.gale.com for reference/periodical titles and most searched individuals in Biography Resource Center.
• Lesson plans on galeschools.com: Nine lesson plans available, plus two specifically for Lives & Perspectives Collection. Also accessible in the Toolbox!
• In-product research guide: A guide to how to conduct biographical research and the types of resources in Biography Resource Center. A great information literacy tool!
• Webinars: Run by the Product Manager, these happen twice monthly and are all-audience overviews of Biography Resource Center. See Web Conferences link on gale.com for current schedule.
Teacher and librarian resources
Marquis Who’s Who add-on module
• Marquis Who’s Who is an add-on module to Biography Resource Center that adds more than 1.2 million brief biographies to the core content set. Nearly all of these profiles are of people new to Biography Resource Center via the module.
• Provides biographies, primarily from the business sector, with more robust information than just a phone number – often includes career path, political affiliations, organization memberships, brief biographical information.
• Many patrons can make use of this information: Business patrons, job-seekers, patrons looking for a local expert in a field, patrons seeking potential donors for fundraising.
• Fully integrated with Biography Resource Center for seamless searching.
• Adding the module increases the size of Biography Resource Center to more than 1.6 million entries!
New Add-On Module to Biography Resource Center
• Offers multi-disciplinary perspectives on individuals' lives and work.
• Includes more than 160,000 concise and in-depth biographies drawn from reference sources such as American Men & Women of Science as well as nearly 40 titles recently published under the highly respected Macmillan, Scribner and Gale imprints, including the Dartmouth Award-winning Encyclopaedia Judaica, Governments of the World, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, and many others.
• More than a standard recounting of a person's life, the full-length biographies in this collection offer unique biographical viewpoints and provide definitive scholarly records of the lives of some of the most notable and influential figures in history, world culture, science, religion, health, government, and more.
• Fully integrated with Biography Resource Center for seamless searching.
• By pairing the Lives and Perspectives Collection with the Marquis Who’s Who module, Biography Resource Center becomes one of the most comprehensive full-text biographical reference databases available, with more than 1.7 million biographies!
Benefits to your library
• Increases the number of biographies in the base product by more than 35%.
• 92% of individuals covered are unique to those already included in Biography Resource Center.
• Makes biographies from significant reference sets searchable using the paths in Biography Resource Center designed to deliver targeted results.
• Offers biographical perspectives not broadly available elsewhere.
• Print content valued at more than $22,000!
• Puts content of high quality at your users’ fingertips.
How does the module help library patrons, particularly the students that make use of K12, Public and Academic libraries?
• Helps students locate credible, relevant information written and reviewed by experts
• Improves skills for evaluating sources of information by providing content from authoritative Gale titles not on the open web
• Students can comprehend information written at the college level by scholars that augments what is available in the core content set
• Multiple viewpoints on an individual encourage and support comparative analysis and study required by college courses
Title list
Perspectives: Pope John Paul II
Three Lives & Perspectives biographies, from Encyclopaedia Judaica, New Catholic Encyclopedia, and Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, all providing specific perspectives on his life based on the encyclopedia subject.
• The Encyclopaedia Judaica biography focuses on his (and Catholicism's in general) relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people of the world, especially events related to the Holocaust.
• The NCE biography provides the most breadth and depth compared to biographies in BioRC core, at more than 10,000 words long.
• The Europe Since 1914 biography looks at his papacy through the lens of how he dealt with various political issues including, again, Catholics' relationship to Jews, and communism.
Perspectives: Encyclopedia of World Biography
John Paul II
Perspectives: Encyclopaedia Judaica
John Paul II
For more information or to sign up for a free trial, see the Lives & Perspectives Collection entry in Gale’s online catalog at http://www.gale.com.
Marketing materials
We understand how important it is to market your library’s resources to your patrons. We have created a new set of materials to help you bring Biography Resouce Center to the masses!
Posters
Bookmarks
Tent cards
New one-sheet
New product site
Coming this winter!
We are hard at work on an updated version of Biography Resource Center and expect to launch it in late 2009/early 2010. New features include:
Did you mean? search assistance
Improved relevancy of results display
ReadSpeaker technology
Inter-article hyperlinking
Sharing tools
PDF support
OpenURL compliance
Contact the product manager
with feedback about Biography Resource Center anytime!
Erin Walker
Product Manager
Gale Cengage Learning
(248) 699-4253, ex. 8296