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Dictionary of National Biography
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The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) has 58,094 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times up to 2008, you will find 2,400 years of history and 10,894 portraits.
Local information.
Use the 'Full text' search on the homepage, type in 'Paisley' and you will find 344 results of people with a Paisley connection! Or select 'for local and family historians' on the left under 'Oxford DNB resources' and choose 'Renfrewshire lives'.
There are people from the 4th-century BC Greek explorer Pytheas to Princess Diana, and from the founding fathers of America to the Nawabs of Bengal.
- find articles about families and groups - from British leaders in Roman Britain to the Busby Babes
- use quicksearch if you know who you are looking for
- sign up for 'a life a day' by email
- Scotland and the Scots
- saints
- poets laureate
- monarchs of Scotland
- cabinet secretaries (1916-2008)
- children and childhood
- oscar winners
- Nobel prize winners
- olympic title holders
- musical chart-toppers
- lives of the law
- the gunpowder plot
Cross reference - there are millions of cross-references within the text of the DNB (in blue type) and, using the 'highlight search', make up your own cross references. Choose person or full text search e.g. 'Diana Spencer', choose one of the articles returned and highlight any name or word in an article. Select GO, next to the quick search box at the top right, , and the DNB will perform a search across the database on the selected text.
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