Research Guides: Social Work: Social Work Resources

Welcome! You are looking at the best library resources for Social Work. If you need to research a different discipline, please take a look at some of our other Research Guides to get an idea of what is available.

Search a specific database

Academic Search Complete
A full text database containing nearly 5,100 journals. Great for social work topics. You can combine this with Social Work Abstracts to search two different databases at once!

Library Search
This will search most of what is available in the library.

Academic OneFile
Home to nearly 13,000 indexed journals, a comprehensive, up-to-date and easy-to-use database for serious academic research. Provided by NOVEL NY.

CINAHL Ultimate

This is the definitive research database for nursing and allied health professionals. This is an upgrade from CINAHL Complete.
MEDLINE with Full Text
Major database for research in medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine and much more. Includes content from the free online database PubMed.

PsycINFO
Our biggest psychology database. Good for topics on behavior, motivation, addiction and attitudes.
Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection
Largest full text database covering topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational & experimental methods.
PsycTESTS
A research database that provides access to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments as well as descriptive information about each test and its development and administration.

Newspaper Source Plus
Includes 1570 full-text newspapers from around the world and more than 583,100 television and radio news transcripts, videos & podcasts.

New York Times
Offers current issues of the New York Times.

Social Work Abstracts

Our best Social Work database. Contains indexing and abstracting from social work, social welfare and other related journals from 1965 to the present. It covers topics such as homelessness, AIDS, child and family welfare, aging, substance abuse, legislation, community organization and much more.

Creating Search Strings

Generating Keywords
This tool from UT Austin will help you plan your search strategies before you begin using databases.

Background Information

CQ Researcher
Reports of issues of the day, including many related to social work, e.g. homelessness, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration. Note that these sources are NOT peer reviewed, but can help you learn about a topic.