Letter from the Editor
Welcome to the new online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford DNB), which we’re proud to present after months of hard work. This is the first time since its launch in September 2004 that the site has had a major redesign, not just in appearance but also in how the site works, and we hope you’ll agree that it functions as well as it looks, and provides a good reading experience too.
The site has a clean, modern design, which works well across all mobile and tablet formats, while the search is foregrounded to make it easier, we think, for users to take advantage of the richness of the text and the data behind it. Images and podcasts are now searchable in their own right, and our theme entries (feature essays, reference groups, and reference lists) are incorporated into the main body of content.
I hope you enjoy looking around the Oxford DNB. The launch of the new site is an opportunity to discover new lives as well as revisiting familiar ones, and for experimenting with the many search capabilities.
We have a free selection of entries from the most recent updates available here.
-- David Cannadine
General Editor, Oxford DNB
November 2017
