Biography Collection

• Scope and Use of the Collection
• Provide Feedback and Suggest New Resources
• Classification
• Further Information
• List of Books with Links to the Catalogue

Scope and Use of the Collection

New College Library’s Biography Collection comprises significant biographies and autobiographies written about a wide range of subjects, from monarchs to musicians, writers to politicians.  It also includes exemplary and innovative works in the biography and memoirs genre.

The Collection is held on open access shelves in the Group Study Room, which is situated on the Lower Floor of the Library.  All items in the Biography Collection are borrowable.

The primary aim is to provide informative, accessible, and well-written books about important figures in history and of today for students’ leisure and pleasure reading, and of course for study purposes as well.  Other biographies (of which there are many) held in the Library primarily to support course-related reading are located within the main classified sequence of books beyond the Group Study Room.

Provide Feedback and Suggest New Resources

If you would like to make a comment about the Biography Collection, or you wish to suggest new biographies or autobiographies to be added to the Collection, you are invited to contact the Librarian.

Classification

Items in the Collection bear shelfmarks beginning BIO/.  They form part of the larger General Interest Collection located within the Group Study Room.  The listing below provides the subject (or subjects) of the biography, the shelfmark of the book, and its title.

Further Information

The Library’s copies of Autobiography: A Very Short Introduction (also online) and Biography: A Very Short Introduction (likewise online) provide very useful and engaging guides to what autobiography and biography are and what they do.

The Library holds in the Group Study Room the 60-volume Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for reference-use only (REF/DNB); this major biographical dictionary is available online as well.

Other online resources available to New College students and staff, which are useful in particular for quick-reference purposes, include:

• American National Biography
• Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Dansk Biografisk Leksikon
• Deutsche Biographie
• Dictionary of African Biography
• Dictionary of Canadian Biography
• Dictionary of Irish Biography
• Dictionary of Literary Biography
• Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
• Dictionary of Welsh Biography
• Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
• Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek (Belgium)
• Who’s Who and Who Was Who
• World Biographical Information System

List of Books with Links to the Catalogue