This page is a resource for information and research for students in SW 200: Social Work & Social Welfare Services but is not a substitute for meeting with a librarian! Please use the orange "Schedule a Research Appointment" button on the left to get the best resources for your topic.
The library provides a wide variety of periodical resources. These periodicals contain various kinds of information; from scholarly research in peer reviewed journals*, and professional communications, to magazine and newspaper articles**. Each kind of publication has a unique niche, and it's essential to understand which one is best suited to the topic you are exploring.
* peer reviewed journals contain scholarly research articles based on high quality studies by recognized expertise. Most researchers have the terminal degree in their discipline, and are regarded as having substantial expertise. Their research is reviewed by other highly qualified experts in the academic field of the subject presented. These individuals make up an editiorial board that has the authority to accept or reject the submissions to the journal. They critically evaluate the manuscript against the standards that are in place, taking into account the quality, organization, veracity, methodology, conclusions, clarity, and references of the material presented for publication. Many journals are highly selective, and acceptance for publication is quite competitive.
**magazine and newspaper articles present a wide range of current information. Some material is of exceptionally good quality, while other publications have varying standards. There are opportunities to find regional, national, and international perspectives on topics or events, providing the reader with unique windows, and insights, that otherwise might be unavailable.
Social Work Abstracts offers extensive coverage of more than 500 social work and human services journals dating back to 1965. Produced by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the database provides indexing and abstracts dealing with all aspects of the social work field, including theory and practice, areas of service and social issues and problems.
This unique search engine provides access to enormous quantities of scholarly research citations, that may have links to full text. The links include publications in JStor, and numerous other repositories. You can link to this website; https://scholar.google.com
The great benefit to using Goggle Scholar is how comprehensive the results are. It is often the case that if the searcher has incomplete or wrong citation details, finding some otherwise difficult material is often successful.
In addition, the reader has access to a variety of formatted citations for most material imbedded in the app.
This utility is a world-wide catalog of the books, and other resources, from all types of libraries, all over the over the world. They list almost 400,000,000 item records. You can search this website through the following link; http://www.worldcat.org/
Besides being about to verify citation information, you can utilize the functionality to place Inter-library loan requests for books that are not held by WCSU Libraries, or the 17 WestSearch consortium member libraries.
