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With 8.5 million digital facsimile articles, the World biographical information system online (WBIS) is presented by its publisher as the most complete biographical database in the world. This resource uses dictionaries written in different temporalities, geographical areas and logics. Through a quantitative objectivation of the 609 French-speaking dictionaries gathered in its Archives Biographiques Françaises and a qualitative analysis of several books and biographies it contains, this article proposes a reflexive feedback on the French branch of the WBIS. It aims to propose some reference points in this mass of information without neglecting the narrative strategies and social framings that shape these biographical articles.