The Ready Reference section provides essential facts on more than 10,000 people, with instant answers to thousands of questions on rulers, royalty, entertainers, prizewinners, sports personalities, and record holders.

A further 50 entries are in the form of Connections essays. These link key figures in exploration, history, ideas, the arts, science and technology. The user can follow World War 2, the birth of impressionism, or the development of nuclear physics by seeing who did what, when, and why, and assessing any given person's contribution in a particular field.

The database provided the content for the Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia (Cambridge University Press) and shorter entries were supplied for the Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. This database also populates the Biography.com interactive website for A & E Television Networks to support their Biography Channel television network, and by Iwanami Shoten to produce a CD version of the Cambridge Biographical products in Japanese.

The database can be delivered in up to five individual data formats, dependent upon the client's requirements or the data platform upon which the content is to be used. These formats vary from a full length entry to a shortened - and in some cases a single line -variant.

The data is organised using Crystal Reference's patented classification scheme which allows for subsections of data to be extracted subject to the client's requirements.

For samples of this content, please visit