Garraty, John Arthur, and Mark C. Carnes. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. MAIN Reference 920.073 A5127 or Internet. The standard historical U. S. biographical dictionary in 24 volumes, and an example of a major national historical biographical set. 

Matthew, H. C. G., and Brian Howard Harrison. Oxford dictionary of national biography: in association with the British Academy: from the earliest times to the year 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. MAIN Reference 920.042 D554 2004 or Internet at link above. Click on “Subscribers enter here.” The standard historical British biographical dictionary in 60 volumes.   Similar resources will exist for other countries.

K.G. Saur Verlag. World Biographical Information System. [Farmington Hills, Mich.]: Thomson Gale, 2004. Internet Index to thousands of biographical works in many languages.  Northwestern will own many of the biographical dictionaries indexed here, and in addition has most of the source documents on microfiche as a series of "biographical archives."   Particularly strong indexing of older biographical works.

Oxford Bibliographies Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Internet. Bibliographies of topics in Atlantic history, international relations,  Islamic studies, Jewish studies, Latin American studies, music, political science, public health, and Renaissance and Reformation.  Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on specific topics in a growing range of subject areas.

Boyer, Paul S., and Melvyn Dubofsky. The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. MAIN Reference 973.03 O98, CORE 2-North 973.03 O98 or Internet.

Kinsbruner, Jay, and Erick Detlef Langer. Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. Gale Virtual Reference Library. 2nd ed.  Detroit: Gale/Cengage,, 2008. Internet.

Ness, Immanuel. The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Internet.