Arts

08 Oct 09

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography was first published five years ago.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is today marking its fifth anniversary since its first publication in print and online.

To mark the dictionary’s fifth anniversary, Oxford DNB editors have selected notable lives from five years of updates, and are making these available in a free gallery available from today.

Since 2004 the Oxford DNB online has been extended 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: from Roman officers at Vindolanda to the man behind the TV test card.

This brings the total number of people included in the Oxford DNB to 57,045, from the 4th century BC to those who died in 2005. The Dictionary has been written by 13,254 authors.

Alongside Roman officers and George Hersee (the television engineer), the selection includes the first English woman QC, Charles Darwin’s daughter Annie (now the subject of the film Creation), an Indian war hero, a jiving duke, and the man behind London’s first coffeehouse – 350 years before Starbucks. 

Editor Lawrence Goldman said: ‘In the past five years the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has established itself as the leading source of British biographical and historical information. In this time more than two thousand new biographies have been added to the Dictionary, including more than a thousand articles on people who have died since 2000.

‘Alongside new people, the online edition has also added a wealth of supporting material, including hundreds of articles on historical groups and clubs to show how individuals came together in the past. Finally, the past five years has seen a huge increase in the popularity of the Dictionary’s accessible and easy to use online edition. Today the Dictionary is used across the UK by scholars, students, family historians, archivists, and writers, who can now access it anywhere, anytime, via university and public libraries – as well as by many more readers worldwide.’

The fifth anniversary of the ODNB coincides with the publication of the dictionary’s fifteenth update, which includes a special focus on Scots, at home and overseas, and Britons in Latin America.

Oxford DNB is freely available in almost all UK public libraries, with direct home access for library members.

It also won a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for the University in 2007, with particular mention being made of its accessible, topical, and easy to use online edition. The ODNB is a joint project of the University and University Press.