Biography Reference Center

Can you identify these famous people?              

1-Born in Poland—female—physicist

2-Native American—Athlete—born in 1800s

3-Born in Denmark—Astronomer (He had a metal nose)—1500s

If you don’t know the answers (and even if you do), you should try the Biography Reference Center, one of the online database resources available for free from the Fresno County Public Library.

Looking for….?

Not every famous person has books written about them. Some people only get a paragraph in an encyclopedia, and others aren’t mentioned at all. With the Biography Reference Center, all you have to do is type in the name, and any articles on that person are only a click away.

Don’t know the name of a person, but you know some things about them? You can search by when they lived (400-200 b.c.e., 1880-1900s), where they lived or died (England, Japan, Argentina), what they did (politician, athlete, scientist, writer, actor), ethnicity (African-, Asian-, Hispanic/Latino-, Jewish-, Native-American) or by their gender (male, female).

The biographies are even labeled by reading level, so students from grade school to college can find information that fits their skill levels. And because you’re using a library database, you know the information is accurate.  You can even export citations to use in reports.

If you have any questions about this database or others, call us at (559) 960-9699.

FCPL databases provide cardholders with a vast amount of accurate, free online information. This blog post is a part of a weekly series highlighting FCPL databases and is tagged with the blog tag “Resource of the Week.”

ANSWERS:  1—Marie Curie.  2—Jim Thorpe.  3—Tycho Brahe.