Social Work
Databases for Scholarly Sources
Social Services Abstracts
*Recommended for Social Work
Social Services Abstracts covers current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. The database abstracts and indexes over 1,300+ serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations as well as other scholarly sources. It is the most comprehensive source of citations focused on the social work field!
Broad database that is most useful for health sciences, the 'harder' end of the social sciences (e.g. psychology), and natural sciences. This is a good place to look for intervention studies. It is also useful for evaluating the relative importance of a particular article to the field.
Pacific Library - Boxer Search
Pacific's library search includes millions of items, including both electronic and print material. All of our books and e-books are here, as well as about 80% of the journal articles that we have paid access to. This is the quickest way to get into sources that you can access immediately, without having to guess whether you'll be able to get the full text. Tips:
- You can limit to "Full Text Only", Print Books only, Ebooks only, etc. Use the tools on the left hand.
- You can request a copy of anything you can't immediately get online. See more tips about getting access here.
This database gathers sources from many other databases into one centralized location. It will find nearly any academic book or article that has been published. The downside is that it is so large, that the items you really want to find may be buried under dozens of irrelevant sources. Also, there may be many articles that you cannot actually open. Tips:
- Are the articles you are finding too old? Change the date range using the tool on the left side:
- If you find one really good article/book, you can find others like it by clicking on the "Cited By" or "Related Articles" links:
- Become a Google search expert by using their advanced operators
Dissertations and Theses (Proquest)
This database is an amazing resource for dissertations (which are the final papers of Ph.D. and Master's students, typically 50-250 pages long). This is a great place to find cutting edge research on recent issues. These sources are generally very difficult to find except through this database! Example:
PubMed (same data, different skin as Medline / Ovid)
This is THE premier source for medical research. PubMed is the non-professional version of the database; Medline/Ovid has more advanced options but is a little less user friendly. You can often find medical intervention studies here.
The is the best source for research related to education. You can often find studies related to school-based interventions here.
This database is especially good for topics in history, political science, English and the humanities. Its biggest negative is that most of the sources in it were published 3+ years ago. Use the Advanced Search for best results! If you scroll down on Advanced Search page, you can pick specific topics to search within. Example:
Many More Options...
Library Databases Page
Many other specialized databases are available through the library. We have organized them according to academic field.