Introduction: The Biography Resource Center is an electronic database from Gale sources that provides biographical information of people in history, media, and popular sources. The BioRec is designed to provide quick information on individuals and provides a various range of information on several topics. For example, you may be searching for information on where President Barack Obama was born and will also find information on his family, education, books about him, his publication, and much more. 

          The BioRec combines more than 450,000 biographies and in-depth biographies that include overviews of the subject's life and accomplishments. You can also search for brief biography for the most general information about the individual without having to weed through a large amount of information. If you are looking for long biographies and more, the database provides links to reliable internet source of the individual.

Key Features:

          The BioRec has several search options including basic and advance searching, biographical facts search, and browse by category. The basic and advance searches allow users to search by name, nationality, ethnicity, birth or death year, gender, and occupation. These features help you limit and expand results. If you are looking for someone and cannot remember their official name; this database can assist you with your search by searching under occupation or age to find results.  You can also browse by category. This feature is useful for looking up individual within the same topics area. You may be searching for African Americans in history and find a list of people within the database who is African American and what they have done in history. This key feature enables you to really look at their topic. You may find more individuals in your topic area by using this feature.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Due to this database’s amazing topical coverage and special features, there are not a lot of weaknesses. The database is limited to just biographies and does not include information on other topics, such as the individual and their affiliation. For example, you cannot look up civil rights and find information on this topic; you can find individuals and their biographies that have been reputable in the civil rights movement. BioRec is full of many features that will ensure successful research results. There are many search options and areas to search within, such as browse by category and occupation. These features provide key strengths for you to look in unknown territories.

Uses:

          This database can be used for many kinds of research. The browse by category feature can enable you to search under a topic and find the individuals who have been reputable in that topic. If you are searching in American First Ladies and want to know which first ladies who speak multiple languages; you can search through all the first ladies and find if they are bilingual. This database is also useful as a person search. You may interested in Edgar Allen Poe and search his biographies. You may also be writing a research paper on influential Japanese American and find several individuals who meet this criteria.    

          The BioRec can be used by many kinds of students and researchers. This database is more appropriate for researchers age 15 and up. The material may be overwhelming for younger researchers and is more appropriate for pre-college age in high school and above. The BioRec can be taught to any researcher using tutorials and tools for research. The overall content and commercialism seems to be towards more mature researchers, but any researcher looking for biographical resources can use this database.