Biographical Reference Works for and about Women, from the Advent of the Women's Liberation Movement to the Present: An Exploratory Analysis

Hundreds of English-language biographical reference books devoted to women subjects were published between 1966 and 2006. These works compensated for underrepresentation of women in standard sources and responded to the intense interest in women’s lives on the part of feminist scholars. The findings in this article are derived from a bibliographic database that includes works limited by nationality, race, occupation, and other factors, as well as general biographical dictionaries. A decade-by-decade analysis reveals trends in subject content that parallel developments in the scholarly field of women’s studies and the public arena. Problems with duplicative content, subjectivity, and factual errors are described, and points for evaluation are recommended. As biographical information about women is increasingly available on the open Web, questions remain about the nature and future of this type of information source. Introduction For as long as books have been published, collective biographies have been in vogue. From the lives of the saints, to multivolume national biographical dictionaries, to gossipy works about movie stars—readers and researchers have many resources to satisfy their seemingly inexhaustible appetites for information about the lives of others. Why Women’s Biography Matters Biographical dictionaries are important materials in every library’s general reference collection. According to a popular textbook on reference services, “one of the most consistent features of reference work has been Biographical Reference Works for and about Women, from the Advent of the Women’s Liberation Movement to the Present: An Exploratory Analysis