Australian Dictionary of Biography

Not to be confused with Dictionary of Australian Biography.

Australian Dictionary of Biography

Country	Australia
Language	English
Subject	Biographies of notable Australians
Genre	Encyclopedia
Published	Carlton, Victoria
Publisher	Melbourne University Press
Publication date	1966–2012
Media type	Hard copy
ISBN	978-0-522-84459-7
Website	adb.anu.edu.au

The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB or AuDB) is a national co-operative enterprise founded and maintained by the Australian National University (ANU) to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia's history. Initially published in a series of twelve hard-copy volumes between 1966 and 2005, the dictionary has been published online since 2006.

The ADB project has been operating since 1957. Staff are located at the National Centre of Biography in the History Department of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Since its inception, 4,000 authors have contributed to the ADB and its published volumes contain 9,800 scholarly articles on 12,000 individuals.

The ADB project should not be confused with the much smaller and older Dictionary of Australian Biography by Percival Serle, first published in 1949, nor with the German Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (published 1875–1912) which may also be referred to as ADB in English sources.

Hardcopy volumes

To date, the ADB has produced eighteen hard copy volumes of biographical articles on important and representative figures in Australian history, published by Melbourne University Press. In addition to publishing these works, the ADB makes its primary research material available to the academic community and the public.

Volume(s)	Years published	Subjects covered
1 and 2	1966–67	Covered those Australians who lived in the period 1788–1850
3 to 6	1969–76	Covered those Australians who lived in the period 1851–1890
7 to 12	1979–90	Covered those Australians who lived in the period 1891–1939
13 to 16	1993–2002	Covered those Australians who lived in the period 1940–1980
17 and 18	2007-2012	Covered those Australians who died between 1981 and 1990
Supplement	2005	Dealt with those Australians not covered by the original volumes
Index	1991	Index for Volumes 1 to 12

Online

On 6 July 2006, the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online was launched by Michael Jeffery, Governor-General of Australia, and received a Manning Clark National Cultural Award in December 2006. The website is a joint production of the ADB and the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, University of Melbourne (Austehc).

External links

• National Centre of Biography