Biography Resource Center: African Americans

Finding Information

Gale has made the Biography Resource Center: African Americans an easy-to-use resource, giving researchers the opportunity to choose from a number of search options.

Searching

Biography Resource Center: African Americans has a search engine that’s consistent with Gale's other Resource Centers. It employs three main types of searches: Name Search, Biographical Facts Search and Advanced Search.

Name Search – This search queries the database for full names, a portion of a surname, and first names in any order. If spelling is a concern, a search can be conducted on just a portion of the name by using the "Name Contains" option.

Biographical Facts Search – This search allows users to refine results by searching on one or several biographical facts, including:

• Name
• Occupation
• Gender
• Birth and death year
• Birth and death place
• Limit search to results with images

Advanced Search – This search allows users to focus on the following options:

• Full text – retrieves results based on the presence of a word, words, or a phrase within biographies
• Name - Searches biographies for an individual's name. Results will be returned in alphabetical order
• Keyword – performs more targeted searches based on keywords attached to the biographies
• Source – limits results based on the title of a reference source

Search Results

Search results are presented in alphabetical order by last name, with birth and death years and nationality and occupation included, when available. When users select an individual, they will be taken to the tabbed results screen for that person. From there, users can access a variety of information, which is delivered in the following ways:

• Narrative Biographies – long biographies on the selected individual, usually 2,000-3,000 words or more
• Thumbnail Biographies – brief biographies containing key facts on the selected individual
• Magazine Articles – full-text articles written about or by the individual
• Recent Update – a "pop-up" window with a brief summary of key recent news about the person
• Web sites – a list of links to Web sites about the individual

Results can be printed using the browser's print commands, or formatted and printed using Biography Resource Center: African Americans’ commands. Particularly helpful results may be marked and saved for easy retrieval at a later time. Just be sure to update the "Mark List" before moving on. Biography Resource Center: African Americans also has a very helpful citation generator. Clicking the "View Citation List" button displays formatted citations of the resources that the researcher previously accessed.

Saving Search Results
Researchers can easily save search results on any page
containing the InfoMark icon:

Save and copy the persistent URL belonging to this InfoMark
(The URL will be extremely long)

1. Save desired results with a "right click" on the address box inside the browser
2. You will be presented with a pop-up menu
3. Choose "Copy" (The URL is now in the Windows Clipboard)

Users can now use this URL in e-mail, documents, to build Web pages and much more. To learn more about Gale's InfoMarks visit www.gale.com/InfoMarks.