John Bartlett Familiar Quotations 1st ed. Judging by the popularity of interview shows on television and radio and the proliferation of biographies and autobiographies, our interest in the most trivial details of the lives of others continues unabated.
Biographical resources follow the general form of other reference tools.
The most difficult task for biographical sources is to meet the criteria established for the work, to remain free of prejudice. Many feel that women and minorities have been excluded unfairly or conciously under-represented from many biographical reference tools. As a consequence, many specialized resources have been developed to compensate for previous omissions. Often, in addition to wanting to know about someone, people often want to know who said or wrote a particular memorable or pithy comment or phrase. Scholars want to know not only who said or wrote what, but where, when, and in what context.