Electronic Databases for Social Service & Social Work Topics

This is Eileen Libby's list of databases to use for working on topics in social work and social services. Under each topic she has provided a very rough listing, from most useful to least for doing general work in the topic. Note that for more specific subtopics, the ranking will be different.

Database tips:

Use the right database. Don't look for more general articles in a statistical database, for example.
Take time to learn different dabases search interfaces; it will be worth it in the long term.
Use the right search terms to focus your searches. Different disciplines often use different terms when referring to similar concepts. Notice how results expand or narrow or become more or less meaningful with the use of synoymns.
Eliminate redundant terms. For example, when using "Education Abstracts" don't use "education" or "school" as a search term.
Use logical operations to focus your search. Ovid and OCLC provide methods for combining terms with "and" and "or" operators. Effective use of these operators, along with good search term selection, can dramatically improve search results.
Save your results on disk or by e-mail. You can lose work for a variety of reasons: you inadvertently close the results window; your session times out (OCLC sessions time out after 10 minutes, for example); a hardware or software fault on the database server can wipe out results.
Options:
- E-mail results to yourself. Some databases e-mail query logic along with the search results. The logic can be pasted into the database to reproduce the results at a later time.
- Save results to a USB (flash/jump/thumb) drive.
- Save results to http://webshare.uchicago.edu Login with CNET id and password.
Don't hesitate to ask SSAd Library staff for help!
- phone: 773-702-1199
- e-mail: ssad@lib.uchicago.edu

Topics

Addiction/drug abuse/drug dependency/alcoholism

Adoption

Advocacy/social change

Aged/elderly/gerontolgy

Biography

Biography and Genealogy Master Index

Child/Children - policy

Community,development/organization

Crime/criminals - adult, juvenile

Disability - physical, developmental

Economics

Education/Social work education/school social work/special education

Family - therapy, policy

Gender studies/sexual diversity

Health care - administration, policy

History, US

History, world

Historical Abstracts (ABC-CLIO)

International social work/service/welfare/policy

Management/business

Nonprofits

Poverty/poor

Psychotherapy - adult, child

Public Policy

Race/race relations/racism

Religion/Spirituality

Social policy/social Welfare

Social science - general

Statistics - on social work and social service topics

Tests - psychological

Urban planning/studies/history

Women

Alphabetical List of All Databases Referenced