Marquis Biographies Online | eReviews 

Content Marquis Biographies Online (MBO) packs in detailed information on more than 1.4 million accomplished individuals. Content includes the current biographies of those who appeared in the publisher’s “Who’s Who” print titles since 1985 that cover the regions of the United States and the country as a whole; Asia; people from around the world who are prominent in science and engineering, media and communications, entertainment, medicine and health care, finance and business, religion, and human services; Americans important in nursing and art and as emerging leaders; and famous Americans since 1607. The file is updated daily with new biographies and is searchable by name, birth year, birthplace, education attained, gender, geography, hobbies and interests, keyword, occupation, political affiliation, and religion.

Usability The opening screen is clear, uncluttered, and attractive. A midscreen box offers Quick (name and keyword) or Advanced Search (using the other access points listed above) via two tabs. It also allows users to select which segments of the database to search—Marquis Biographies Online (the entire file) or files corresponding to publications such as Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and Who’s Who in American Politics. At screen left is an omnipresent column with an Advanced Search Navigator (making those segment choices available throughout). Beneath that is a list of Help links, including Search Tips, Your Search History, Abbreviations Look Up, Marquis Who’s Who, About the Database, and Contacts.

A quick look at the Search Tips section revealed that some files in the database use formal names and others use nicknames, so users will do well to try both. A Quick Search for “skip gates,” for example, returned the entry for Henry Louis Gates, listing his full name and nickname, occupation, birth date and place, education (three very impressive earned degrees and more than 40 honorary ones), career and career-related accomplishments, lists of creative works and awards, civic contributions and memberships, religion, hobbies and special interests, family (parents, spouse, children), address, and a list of the “Who’s Who” print editions in which his biography appears. The online entry is more readable and longer than the print one, as the online material uses fewer abbreviations (although the Help section contains 33 screens of abbreviations used here and in the print volumes).

Wildcard searches are also possible. A question mark can be used to substitute for a single character—for example, the query “B???Y” finds five-letter names beginning with B and ending in Y. An asterisk can be used to signify any number of missing letters; the search “B*Y” therefore will return hits such as Billy, Barney, and Bradley. Clicking the Wildcard Name Search checkbox will automatically search for letters before and after text entered by the user.

Searches of well-known individuals across a number of fields were quite successful: Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse, Derek Jeter, Jane Addams, Constance Winchell, and Eugene Sheedy were all there. Margaret Sanger appears in entries from two different “Who’s Who” books; Bill Katz is also featured, but the entry hasn’t been updated to reflect his death in 2004. There was no entry for baseball player Bobby Thomson. He is, however, profiled in Wikipedia, as are the other figures mentioned, including Thomson.

Some of the searches cannot be replicated in Wikipedia, though. For example, an Occupation Keyword search for “librarian” returns 9,326 entries that are sortable by first or last name, birth date, occupation, city, state, or country. Even a search for a much smaller field—focus group facilitators—resulted in 21 hits. In fact, the 45 broad occupational fields listed in the Advanced Search, ranging from Administrative and Support Services to Law Enforcement and from Telecommunications to Visual Arts, reveal what sets this resource apart from free tools such as Wikipedia and Google. MBO covers figures beyond pop culture icons and those enjoying 15 minutes of notoriety. It provides detail users are unlikely to find anywhere else, at least not accessible in the ways MBO makes it.

This content is broad yet deep and easy to access, encompassing what other online resources don’t. Most important, the information here has been vetted, and this makes MBO a highly credible source. Wikipedia is still the go-to for fast lookups, but MBO is far superior for reference, publication, public speaking, and the record.

However, as Marquis explained, “Our site has a ten-minute automatic Time Out feature included. If you leave your session inactive, after ten minutes, you will be asked to log in again. If you mistakenly close your Internet browser window (before choosing ‘Log Out’), you need only wait ten minutes to be refreshed so you can log back in.” This is a long time for library users to sit tight, as they may have limited time at workstations. Usability would be greatly enhanced if this feature were turned off.

PRICING Marquis prices the database according to an institution’s size and the level of access desired (one user at a time, two to five concurrent users, or unlimited access). Starting prices for single-user annual subscriptions are $495 for K-12 libraries; $795 for small public libraries; and $1,195 for government/not-for-profit institutions, two- and four-year colleges, and university libraries.

Bottom Line Despite a usability issue, MBO rates a nine. Its content makes it an essential, trustworthy reference resource for libraries, reasonably priced and unmatched by free websites.