The Oxford DNB's fifth anniversary, 2004-09

Autumn 2009 marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in print and online.

Since 2004 the Oxford DNB has been extended online with three annual updates (published each January, May, and October). These updates have added biographies of 2123 men and women active between the first and the 21st century. Earlier this year we published a selection of these entries in a freestanding volume. Now, for the ODNB’s fifth anniversary, we’ve looked back at some notable lives added since 2004. Click on an image to see who we’ve chosen.

Further information on all 15 updates published since 2004 is also available.

Online access to everyone in the Oxford DNB—over 57,000 people—is now freely available, at home or anywhere, via nearly all UK public libraries and many libraries worldwide. Personal subscriptions and free institutional trials are also available.

There’s also the Roman officers of Vindolanda, Charles Darwin’s daughter, Annie; Pasqua Rosee, the man behind London’s first coffeehouse, anti-apartheid activist Helen Joseph, and James Pantridge, inventor of the portable heart defibrillator.

Also since 2004

As well as new people, updates have also added more than 450 Theme articles to the Oxford DNB online. Themes provide quick reference points in three forms—lists, groups, and features: good for checking facts, making connections between people, and as routes into the main dictionary:

	Reference lists: place and office holders: for example, British prime ministers or Poets laureate. Reference groups: well-known groups in history, making links between individual members: from Magna Carta to the Goons. Feature essays: expert historians on popular topics: from Roman Britain and the Gunpowder Plot to Life on the home front.

All Themes are available here (requires subscriber access).

Five ways to get going

Sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. With 57,000 people to choose from, there’s always someone in the ODNB to suit your mood or interests. So for the fifth anniversary try these selections of ‘five lives’: from five firsts and lasts to five people to get stuck in a lift with (requires subscriber access).

> Receive a free Life of the Day or a regular biography podcast

> Get the full Oxford DNB online, at home, via UK public libraries (and have a go at our fifth anniversary quiz).