On the open shelves

Alongside our continually changing selections:

• Every day: a new Life of the Day (you can always see the last few days' lives)
• Twice a month: a new episode in our biography podcast

Don't forget: if you like what you see, you can access the complete Oxford DNB free via nearly all UK public libraries and colleges and universities worldwide. Just ask your librarian for details.

Personal subscriptions and institutional free trials are also available from one to twelve months.

What we’ve added since 2004

• First published in 2004 in print and online, the Oxford DNB is updated three times a year with new biographies and Themes for reference and research. Here’s what we’ve added so far.
• Updates in full

Ideas for using the ODNB

• Learning resources: in schools and colleges
• Library resources: for local history and projects
• Book groups: for reading groups and lovers of fiction

Have a look at some of the people included in the ODNB via these feature maps...

• Brewers of Britain
• Lives at sea
• Local heroes
• Podcast by place
• Victoria Cross holders

...and galleries

• Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• Faces of Scotland
• The Armistice, 1918
• Britain's greatest football team?
• Hogarth's people: civility and crime
• Ashes cricket: England vs. Australia

Themes: help with quick reference and research

• as well as individual biographies, the ODNB online includes Themes, an online handbook to the people in British history, providing articles for fact checking, quick reference, and research.
• Themes come in three forms—reference lists, reference groups, and feature essays—with new themes added in each online update. Here’s a selection from the 400 articles now available.

Reference lists: comprehensive guides to post-holders in British history
(full list for subscribers in the Themes area of the online ODNB)

• Prime ministers of the United Kingdom
• Chancellors of the exchequer (1559–2003)
• Poets laureate (1668–2003)
• Signatories of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America (1776)
• Governors-general and viceroys of India (1773–1950)
• Nobel prize-winners in the Oxford DNB

Reference groups: essays on the clubs and networks which shaped British history
(full list for subscribers in the Themes area of the online ODNB)

• Enforcers of Magna Carta (act. 1215–1216)
• The Pilgrim Fathers (act. 1620)
• Scriblerians (act. 1714)
• Chartists (act. 1840–1858)
• Scott’s Antarctic expedition (act.1910–1913)
• Suffragettes (WSPU) (act. 1903–1914)
• Guilty men (act. 1940)
• More on the group's project from the Dictionary's editor

Feature essays: personal insights from expert authors
(full list for subscribers in the Themes area of the online ODNB)

in chronological order

• Myths, legends, and mysteries
• The rise and fall of Roman Britain
• Chaucer and medieval literature
• The Gunpowder Plot
• America in the Oxford DNB
• Makers of the British empire
• The great fire of London
• Entrepreneurs and brand names
• Nelson: creating a hero
• Crimea and the Light Brigade
• Lloyd George and the Liberals
• Appeasement: Chamberlain vs Churchill
• Life on the Home Front, 1939–1945