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Biographies

A guide to finding biographical resources

Finding books

Book icon

To find books, use the library search box, and limit your search to books and electronic books.

If you know which biography you want

Type the title of the biography in the library search box.

If you don't see the book immediately, try another search with the title in quotation marks, and with the author's name added.

For example, to find the book Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Frasier, you'd type this:

A screenshot of a Quest search screen, with the words "prairie fires" "fraser" in the search box, and the Material Type limited to Books.

 

If Simpson Library doesn't have the biography you want, you can have it sent to Simpson from another library, for free, using Interlibrary Loan.

If you want to find all biographies of a given person

Go to the library's Advanced Search page, and search for the person's name as a Subject. Enter the name like this: "Lastname, Firstname."

For example, to find biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder, you'd type this:

A screenshot of a Quest Advanced Search, that says Subject Contains Wilder, Laura Ingalls, and has the Material Type limited to Books

 

This will find all the biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder that Simpson Library owns.

To find biographies at other libraries, use WorldCat. You can have books sent to Simpson Library from other libraries, for free, using Interlibrary Loan.