The DNB is a huge British reference work: the Dictionary of National Biography. It collects life stories of people from British history who were thought worth remembering — writers, scientists, politicians, soldiers, and many quieter names. Historians and students use it in libraries. It is a book, and now also an electronic work, not a club night. The first big edition came out in Britain in the late nineteenth century. A later, much updated version is often called the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, but people still say DNB for this project. The tone is formal and scholarly. You meet it in footnotes: see DNB means “look up this person's life in that dictionary.” Though actually, those same three letters are also a nickname for drum and bass among music fans. This entry is the dictionary. If a history essay says DNB, it wants a life story, not a bass line.