The Oxford DNB: what's new since 2004

The Oxford DNB—a collection of 56,000 specially written biographies of men and women who have shaped all aspects of the British past—was first published in print and online in September 2004. Since then we have added to the 2004 edition with three updates each year, with new material published every January, May and October.

Updates: what's added

Updates are published as part of the online edition of Oxford DNB. Each update extends the dictionary's coverage by adding new biographies as well as new reference content for the Themes area of the website. Themes is an online handbook to the people in British history, providing articles for fact checking, quick reference, and research. Updates also include additions and amendments to existing biographies to keep them in step with new research.

• New biographies: the recent past
• New biographies: from the 'earliest times'
• Themes—for reference and research
• Updating existing Oxford DNB content
• Enhancing the Oxford DNB website

New biographies

Updates between January 2005 and October 2007 have added new biographies of 1300 men and women active between the ninth and the twenty-first century.

Lives from the recent past

More than 600 biographies are of people who died in the opening years of the 21st century. These biographies are published each January and extend the dictionary's coverage by one year at a time (for example, the January 2007 update added 200 lives of people who died in 2003; in January 2008 we add biographies of those who died in 2004, and so on). Recent January updates have included entries on, among others:

• Douglas Adams, writer
• Bernard Katz, writer
• George Harrison, musician and songwriter
• Barbara Castle, politician
• Val McCalla, journalist
• Bernard Williams, moral philosopher
• Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother
• Spike Milligan, comedian and author
• Terry Frost, artist
• Christopher Hill, historian
• Arnold Weinstock, industrialist
• Fred Hoyle, astronomer
• Lorna Sage, literary critic and author

Lives from the 'earliest times'

Updates in May and October add new biographies of people from all periods to the late twentieth century. Many biographies are grouped by a common theme and published together. Recent sets include people behind popular brand names; well-known historical children and adults associated with childhood; women in politics; pioneer film makers; school founders; imperial and Commonwealth lives; and visitors to and exiles in Britain. Other entries in May and October highlight people prominent in British regional history. Recent updates have included entries on, among others:

• Roger Hargreaves (1935-1988), copywriter and children's author
• Alec Reeves (1902-1971), pioneer of the digital age
• Huw Edwards (1892-1970), politician and 'unofficial prime minister for Wales'
• Tomás Ó Fiaich (1929-1990), scholar and cardinal
• Sarah Moulton (1783-1795), child model for Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie
• Pasqua Rosee (fl. 1665-69), servant and founder of London's first coffee house
• Jack Crawford (1775-1831), Sunderland sailor and hero who 'nailed the colours to the mast'
• Eliza Lynch (1835-1886), first lady of Paraguay
• Joseph Knight (b.c.1753), slave and litigant in Scotland
• Pixley ka Isaka Seme (1882-1950), political leader in South Africa
• John Isham (1525-1596), merchant and gentleman
• Henrietta Marshall (1867-1941), author of Our Island Story
• Sergey Kravchinsky [Stepniak] (1851-1895), revolutionary and author
• Aletheia Howard (d.1654), patron and collector of art
• Olaf Stapledon (1886-1956), philosopher and science fiction writer
• Thomas Armitage (1828-1890), campaigner for the blind
• John Ryvere (d. after 1364), soldier
• Abram Lyle (1820-1891), sugar refiner

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Themes—for reference and research

As well as new biographies, updates have added more than 300 articles to create a new themes area of the online Oxford DNB.

Themes provide an expanding 'handbook' to the people who shaped British history worldwide. Themes take three forms—lists, groups, and features—and are useful for quick reference, making connections between people, and as routes into the main dictionary:

• Reference lists provide details of place and office holders: for example, all British prime ministers or Poets laureate
• Reference groups provide essays on well-known groups in history, making links between individual members: from Magna Carta and the Pilgrim Fathers to the Clapham Sect abolitionists and the Guilty Men
• Feature essays allow expert historians to write on popular topics: from Roman Britain and the Gunpowder Plot to Shapers of empire and Life on the home front.

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Updating existing Oxford DNB content

Biographies already in the Oxford DNB are updated as new information comes to light.

Amendments and additions are made as part of every release, which means the dictionary remains in step with new work and resources. Between September 2004 and October 2007, the Oxford DNB's editors have:

• added more than 500 new items of core biographical information (place or date of birth, marriage, death etc.) to articles
• made 4000 additions and corrections across the Oxford DNB's 56,000 articles and estimated 10 million factual statements

Enhancing the Oxford DNB website

Online we've added a number of features to make the dictionary easier to use and promote.

• Oxford Biography Index—an index of every person in the Oxford DNB freely available on the web (and therefore easily findable using popular search engines). Individual index pages provide core biographical information; hyperlinks enable those with access to the Dictionary (for example, via a college or public library) to go straight to the full Oxford DNB biography
• Library resources—includes guides to customizing the Oxford DNB for library patrons and tips on using the dictionary for the study of local history
• Learning resources—ideas and guides for using the dictionary at key stages 3 and 4 (including lesson plans), as well as for AS- and A-level, and degree level study
• Promotion of UK public library availability including details—where available—of online remote access
• RSS web feed—keeping subscribers informed of new free content and updates
• External links to accredited sites. The Oxford DNB now provides 40,000 links to accredited external sites including the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Historical Society bibliography. Links go directly from Oxford DNB biographies to the relevant subject's page in the target resource. From January 2008 the Oxford DNB will also include links to subject's records in Who Was Who allowing for comparisons between contemporary and historical perspectives

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