Online updates

The Oxford DNB publishes three online updates a year, in January, May, and October. Updates add:

• new lives from the earliest times, now including people who died after the year 2000
• new themes - the dictionary's ancillary reference material
• corrections and additions to update existing articles
• new website features to enhance reading and research

You can see exactly what has been in each update - new content, and new features - by checking our online contents pages.

> See summary of the latest update
> Read the editor's 'Introduction to the online edition'

New lives

• Each January update extends the dictionary's coverage by a further year in the twenty-first century, by adding approximately 200 new biographies of people who died in that year (those who died in 2001 were published in January 2005; those who died in 2002 appeared in January 2006).

• The May and October updates provide several hundred new biographies of people from any period in history, who were not previously included. These updates may pay particular attention to people who broadly share a common interest or identity, for example visitors and exiles in Britain, or women in politics.

New themes

• Since publication, we've introduced reference groups (in October 2005) to complement the growing numbers of reference lists and feature essays. And it's now possible to filter themes by type and by subject matter.

Corrections and additions

• Existing biographies are corrected and updated as new information is discovered, keeping the Oxford DNB in step with recent research. Online publication allows the small but significant flow of new and corrected information to be made quickly available to readers.

New website features

• As we learn how our readers are consulting the dictionary, we improve it, by making it easier to find and read articles; easier to navigate between articles; and easier to continue research from the dictionary.

< About Oxford DNB  < The online edition

> Take the tour
> Sample articles: Lives of the Week
> Free biographies by email: sign up for Life of the Day