So, you need to find reliable information on a famous person? The Hekman Library has many helpful resources. Some contain very brief sketches, such as the Who's Who series, and others are more in depth, such as the articles in the mammoth and ever-expanding Dictionary of Literary Biography. This guide describes both print and online sources.
All the print sources listed below can be found in the main reference collection on the 2nd Floor of the library.
Reference Books - Print and Electronic
Current Biography (annual volume from 1940 through the present; living leaders in all fields; articles 2-4 pages long; cumulative index)
CT100 .C8
Encyclopedia of World Biography (22 volumes; brief sketches with vital statistics)
CT103 .E56 1998
American National Biography (24-volumes; prominent people in politics from precolonial times through 1995 and also leaders in all other fields; articles vary in length from one column to several pages)
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (60 volumes; similar to American National Biography, but for the UK; famous people from earliest times to 2000)
DA28 .D4 2004
Dictionary of Canadian Biography (14 volumes plus index; volumes begin with introductory essays to give historical context)
F1005 .D49
Dictionary of World Biography (nine volumes plus an index volume, each devoted to a different era or century)
CT104 .D54 1998
Heads of States and Governments: a worldwide encyclopedia of over 2300 leaders, 1945 through 1992
D412 .L46 1994
Who's Who in America (1958-2006; over 100,000 of the nation's most noteworthy people in the latest volume; very brief sketches with personal and career details)
E663 .W56
Women in World History: a biographical encyclopedia (17 volumes, more than 10,000 entries. Many illustrations, including portraits and genealogical charts. Sources and Suggested Reading lists at the end of each article.
HQ1115 .W6 1999
Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (6 volumes; includes bibliographical references and discographies)
ML105 .B16 2001
Dictionary of Literary Biography (over 300 volumes, each volume focusing on a particular literary movement, historical period, or author)
PN451 .D5 plus individual vol. #
Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: pioneering lives from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century
Q141 .B5285 2000
Indexes and Abstracts
Interdisciplinary, general-topic databases can be helpful in finding reliable information about famous people. One can do a subject search on the person's name, for example, and then select the Article Type Phrase index with the keyword "biography" as an article type. This works best in the FirstSearch family of databases. See example below from Readers' Guide Abstracts.
For more databases like Readers Guide Abstracts, consult the Interdisciplinary subject guide.
Biography Index online is a good source for reliable information about famous people from antiquity to the present day. It indexes journal and magazine articles, books, and autobiographies.
Finding Biographies using WebCat
It's always a good strategy to do a subject search on your person's full name; both keyword - subject and browse - subject work. Browse works better for large sets of results, because it will sort your results first by main heading (the person's name) and then by sub-heading, (e.g., "ADDAMS JANE CONTRIBUTIONS IN SOCIOLOGY," "ADDAMS JANE CORRESPONDENCE," "ADDAMS JANE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL VIEWS"). You will be able to see at a glance how many items are "attached" to each heading. If you do a browse - subject search, make sure you use the format <last name>, <first name>.
Biographical Information 
