Who's Who
By Gail Junion-Metz -- School Library Journal, 9/1/1998
When it comes to researching prominent people, some Web sites stand out from the crowd.
Who was the first president to live in the White House? Who invented the helicopter? Who comes to the rescue of students with biography assignments? When would-be biographers show up on your doorstep this year, remember that there are plenty of sites to aid their search for both simple and hard-to-find biographical information.
An Index for Everyone
Starting a search? The "Biography" section of KidsClick! contains a well-selected list of links to biographical sites. Created by librarians from the Ramapo Catskill (NY) Library System for grades three to seven, KidsClick! is an outstanding Web index for any subject search, including biographies.
Study Web, created by American Computer Resources Inc., offers annotated biographical links with recommended grade levels. Visit the "/lit/toc2.htm" page for author, athlete, scientist, and explorer biographies. Connecting to the "/refer/diction/dict_bio.htm" page leads you to large biographical dictionary sites. Finally, be sure to check out the "/culture/wombios.htm" page for sites dedicated to "distinguished" women.
The Librarians' Index to the Internet offers two fine biographical sections. The "People" section contains links to individual biographies from a range of professions and the "Collected Biographies" section provides extensive annotations written by librarians with library users in mind. First established by the Berkeley Public Library, the site is maintained by public librarians throughout California and funded by a Library Services and Technology Act grant.
Numerous Notable Names
Sponsored by the A&E cable channel, Biography.com contains more than 20,000 short biographies of women and men from antiquity to the present. Visit the "Biography for Kids" page in the "Watch" section to see a schedule of the biographies that are broadcast weekly. (During July it was Paul Revere, Pocahontas, and Davy Crockett). Have older students check out the "Play" section for biography quizzes. The makers of Encyclopaedia Britannica have also entered the online biography business with Britannica's Lives, a subscription-only site for grades four and up that posts a list of biographies for people born the day you visit the site. It offers flexible methods for searching the site's more than 17,000 biographical sketches, but keep in mind that this site focuses more on breadth than depth.
The Biographical Dictionary, created for grades six and higher by S9.com, a nonprofit educational organization, includes more than 25,000 brief biographies that span history. You can search by name, birth or death date, profession, and literary or artistic works. Be sure to click on the "Ideas" link for classroom tie-ins. Lastly, click on the "Master Biographer Challenge," an interactive biography game for high school students.
Did You Know? . . .
Send White House buffs in grades four and higher to Presidents of the United States, created by the librarians at the Internet Public Library. This site contains information about every President and First Lady. Also be sure to visit the National Inventors Hall of Fame, sponsored by the Hall of Fame itself, located in Akron, OH. This site offers biographies of inventors and their portraits for grades eight and higher. If you're not sure who invented what, be sure to click on the "Index of Inventions."
Who was the first African-American man to receive a patent? Visit The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences, created by Mitchell Brown, a librarian at Louisiana State University, for grades eight and higher. Here you'll find facts about African-American biologists, inventors, and engineers. Biographies are indexed by name and profession.This site provides infor mation that is often difficult to locate.
Web Addresses
For previous "Surf For" links, visit SLJ Online at www.slj.com/links.html.
Kids Click!
sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/
Study Web
www.studyweb.com
Librarians' Index to the Internet
sunsite.berkeley.edu/InternetIndex/
Biography.com
www.biography.com/find/find.html
Britannica's Lives
www.eb.com
Biographical Dictionary
www.s9.com/biography/index.html
Presidents of the United States
www.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/
National Inventors Hall of Fame
invent.nforce.com/book/
The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences
www.lib.lsu.edu/lib/chem/display/faces.html
