Every once in a while I decide to get to know a new(to me) free database that we have at Seattle Public Library. I’ve always managed to find some treasure, even in the ones that I wouldn’t have thought were related to my interests!
My most recent foray was into Biography Resource Center. I decided to start with “Biographical Facts Search” and look for someone from a country 
I was unfamiliar with. The drop-down list gave me New Caledonia— What? Where is that? (it turns out it’s south west of the island of Fiji) Whoever comes from there? Well, it turns out that Colin Higgins (1941-1988) did. His debut movie was the cult classic Harold and Maude. “Using the screenplay he wrote as a master’s thesis, Higgins also directed this story of a bizarre love affair between the nineteen-year old depressive Harold and the eighty-year old eccentric Maude.” Cool!
Emboldened by this, next I tried a facts search by occupation. The drop down menu gave me “Advice Columnist” and as an inveterate reader of Carolyn Hax, I needed to go no further.
The result I got was for Marie Manning (1873-1945). She wrote her first advice column in 1898, in William Randolph Hearsts’s New York Journal. 
“Almost 6 feet tall, plain in appearance, indifferent to dress and formal social life, she longed to become a newspaperwoman.” Her column, written under the pseudonym “Beatrice Fairfax” was an instant hit and she got 1400 letters a day. This may be more than Carolyn Hax gets! She wrote steadily for seven years, took a break, and started up again in 1929 because she needed the money during the Depression. Who knew?
I decided it was time to go for the big guns, and do an advanced search.
I entered “American Indian,” “artist,” and “New Mexico.” Amazingly, I got an entry for a Northwest-born and raised artist. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was born in the Confederated Salish and Kootenai reservation in St. Ignatius, Montana. She went to the University of New Mexico, but kept up her Northwest roots, co-authoring Voices of the Community: The West Seattle Cultural Trail which documents the Alki Beach trail. Her middle name, meaning “insight and perception,” is from her grandmother.
There’s a lot more in the database that I’d like to explore when I have time “I could probably stand a refresher on “Current World Leaders”). And of course, next time I need a good article on someone in the news, to help someone find biographical material, or that I come across in my reading, “Biography Resource Center” is the first place I’ll try.
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