Information Services

Social Work

Useful resources for Social Work.

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description:

Indexing and abstracting tool covering health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education. Updated monthly, ASSIA provides a comprehensive source of social science and health information for the practical and academic professional. It contains records from over 500 journals published in 16 different countries, including the UK and US.

Detailed information about ASSIA

Coverage: 1987-present.
NHS Staff and other authorised users:  The Knowledge Network

Box of Broadcasts

Access Information: Access on and off campus
Description: BoB (Box of Broadcasts) enables all staff and students in subscribing institutions to choose and record any broadcast programme from 60+ TV and radio channels. The recorded programmes are then kept indefinitely (no expiry) and added to a growing media archive (currently at over 1 million programmes), with all content shared by users across all subscribing institutions.
Additional information: Please note that it not possible to access content in BoB when you are outside the UK, under the terms and conditions of the ERA licence.

British Education Index

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Compiled and edited at the University of Leeds,

This collection covers educational policy and administration, evaluation and assessment, technology and special educational needs. The BEI provides coverage of all areas of education from pre-school to higher education and is searchable by educational level and age group.

This comprehensive index currently includes more than 310,000 records for articles published in UK journals from 1929 onwards and over 11,650 records for UK thesis. Sources in the BEI include education and training journals, mostly published in the UK along with international literature. An education thesaurus with thousands of terms is also included.
Further information: A full title list is available. (.xls)

CINAHL Plus- Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature

Access information: Access on and off campus. 
Description:

Covers 4,175 nursing, allied health, biomedicine, behavioural science, education and consumer health journal sand a wide range of other material including books, dissertations, educational software and audiovisual material. Abstracts and alerts are available.

Detailed information about CINAHL

Coverage: From 1937.
Help: Online tutorial
Additional Information: NHS Staff and other authorised users: The Knowledge Network

 

IBSS (International Bibliography of Social Science) Online

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description:

Produced by the British Library of Political and Economic Science, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) is an essential online resource for social science and interdisciplinary research focusing on the four core social science subjects of anthropology, economics, politics, and sociology. IBSS includes over 2.5 million bibliographic references to journal articles, books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951. Over 2,800 journals are regularly indexed and some 7,000 book and chapter records are included each year. Abstracts are provided for around 80% of all current journal articles and users can link to the full text of articles in journals subscribed to by the University of Edinburgh.

Userguide: http://proquest.libguides.com/IBSS
Access information: Free access on and off campus from The Learning Exchange
  Note: 1st August 2008 - there is currently only access to the free version of this resource.
Description: The Learning Exchange is a repository of digital learning resources for social care educators.

Newspapers (general)

Acces information:

LexisLibrary - access on and off campus;

NexisUK - access on and off campus;

Factiva - on campus and off campus and via VPN.

Description:

Use LexisLibrary, Factiva or Nexis UK for online access to the full text of the majority of UK national and regional newspapers . Factiva also provides access to full text of the world press. Many titles are archived back to the 1980s. Information on each title is included by clicking the info icon next to the title listing.

Many newspapers also have their own online archive available from their website. Some are free, with others you may have to register or pay a fee to view articles.

The library also has a subscription to the Financial Times online. See separate entry for details.

For historical newspaper content see entries for: Burney Newspaper Collection, Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers, The Historical Scotsman, Palmer's Index to the Times and Times Digital Archive.

Further information: Newspaper content

OECD iLibrary

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description:

Subscribed resources available via the iLibrary include the OECD/IEA Energy iLibrary, OECD Observer and OECD Economic Surveys.

The iLibrary also provides access to a substantial amount of free content, including the OECD Factbook, OECD Working Papers, Key Tables, Multilingual Summaries and most 'At a Glance' publications.

Alternative source:

Not all content is subscribed to. An alternative source is the UK Data Service's UKDS.Stat service.

Access to full content available from the National Library of Scotland. Registration required. Please note your main address must be in Scotland

 

Overton

Access information:

Access on and off campus - see registration guidance in Notes below.

Notes:

Use your University of Edinburgh email address to create a personal account via The Library's institutional subscription:

https://app.overton.io/ui/auth/register?group_code=unie61b0

Future access can then be direct from app.overton.io

Description:

A large searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers from sources that are typically difficult to find in one place. Documents are parsed to find references, people and key concepts in relevant news stories, academic research, think tank output and other policy literature.  Full-text indexing can lead to discovery of additional citations.

Coverage:

Over 11 million full-text policy documents and grey literature from 32,000 organisations in 188 countries

Access Information:

Access on and off campus.

Description:

Difficult to find publications in one place, built around a directory of over 21,000 policy organisations. Provides access to 2.4 million books, articles, working papers, reports, policy briefs, data sets, tables, charts, media, case studies, and statistical publications from organisations including inter-governmental organisations, non-governmental organisations, think-tanks and other research centres.

The search interface also enables searching for tables within reports.

Registered users can receive alerts of material added to the database.

ProQuest Social Science Database

Access information. Access on and off campus.
Description. This database offers indexing and full text for hundreds of academic journals, providing extensive coverage across a wide range of social science disciplines including anthropology, criminology, economics, education, political science, psychology, social work and sociology.
Coverage: 1911 onwards. Coverage varies by individual title.

ProQuest Sociology

Access information. Access on and off campus.
Description.

This database covers the international literature of sociology and social work, including culture and social structure, history and theory of sociology, social psychology, substance abuse and addiction and more. This collection provides full-text coverage of many core titles included in Sociological Abstracts and Social Services Abstracts.

Coverage: 1985 - current
Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description:

Produced and copyrighted by the American Psychological Association, and is a database of full-text articles from 56 journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber.

The database includes all material from the print journals with the exception of advertisements, editorial board lists, instructions to authors and similar material.

PsycINFO - Ovid interface

[PsycINFO via APA PsycNET]

Access information:

Access on and off-campus.

On Ovid interface - Accept cookies.

Cookies (Ovid) Some functions, including use of the Search History, will be disabled if cookies are rejected or no selection is made.
Description:

American Psychological Association produced with citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations, all in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines.

Detailed information about PsycINFO

Coverage: Journal coverage, from 1806 to the present, includes international material selected from more than 2,400 journals written in over 29 languages. Current chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material from 1806 to the present.
NHS Staff and other authorised users: The Knowledge Network
Access Information: Access on and off campus
Description:

Content from SAGE publisher (some unique to SRM) on the steps involved in a research project. Full range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods for the social and behavioural sciences, as well as many methods commonly used in the hard sciences.

Topics: Key concepts in research, Philosophy of research, Research ethics, Planning research, Research design, Data collection, Data quality and data management, Qualitative data analysis, Quantitative data analysis,  Writing and disseminating research.

Userguide: http://sagepub.libguides.com/research-methods/researchmethods
Coverage:

1000+ books, case studies, datasets, encyclopaedias and journal articles, as well as features, such as the Methods Map visual browse tool using a custom taxonomy of 700+ methods terms.  Over 900 videos.  

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Abstract and citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources.  Contains over 16 million author profiles, 70,000 institutional profiles, 5000 publishers, 70 million records, 1.4 billion cited references, covers over 20,000 journals from health, life, physical and social sciences and the humanities.
Coverage: For some subject areas, from 1788 onwards.  
User guide: https://elsevier.libguides.com/Scopus/home
Note: The University of Edinburgh's Affiliation ID is 60027272 (used for configuring Papers 3 for Mac to work with Scopus).
Note: If you would like to register to receive personalised searches, alerts etc then select "Other Institution login", then add "Edinburgh" to the search box to find the University of Edinburgh log in link, select the Shibboleth option if requested.

Social Care Online (1980-2022)

Access information: Free access on and off-campus.
Description: UK social care academic literature but also legislation, government documents, practice and guidance, research briefings and UK grey (informally-published) literature, reports. Produced by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).
Additional Information:

No updates after December 2022 and the site will close in January 2024.

Social Care Online’s bibliographic data will be subsumed in the subscription-based abstracting and indexing database, Social Policy & Practice.

 

Social Services Abstracts

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description: Bibliographic coverage of current research focussed on social work, human service and related areas, including social welfare, social policy and human development.
Coverage: From 1979 with monthly updates.

Sociology Source Ultimate

Access information: Access on and off campus.
Description:

This fulltext database features more than 2.1 million records with subject headings from a 20,000+ term sociological thesaurus designed by subject experts and expert lexicographers. Sociology Source Ultimate contains full text for more than 1000 journals dating back to 1908. This database also includes full text for more than 1000 books and monographs, and full text for over 40,000 conference papers.  Sociology Source Ultimate features more than 26,000 author profiles covering the most cited and most influential authors in the database, who are experts in their field.

Coverage: 1908-present.  Coverage of topics ranges from gender identity, marriage and family, to demographics, political sociology, religion and socio-cultural anthropology.

Social Work Online

Access information:

Access on and off campus.  The Library's subscription to this resource expires 31 July 2024.

Description:

Social Work Online is a multimedia resource that combines video—compelling documentaries and client demonstrations—with relevant text content to illustrate the complex and challenging realities social work students will face as practitioners. 

Web of Science Core Collection

 
Access information:

Access on and off campus.

  Russian Science Citation Index is not presently included in the Web of Science.
Description:

Citations and abstracts to millions of journal articles and conference proceedings from all subjects. Cited reference searching, Impact Factors, h-indexes and email alerts available.

Coverage:

Arts & Humanities (1975 onwards), Science and Social Sciences Citation Indexes (both 1900 onwards), Conference Proceedings in Science and Social Science & Humanities (both 1990 onwards).

Also: Book Citation Indexes in Science and Social Sciences & Humanities (both 2005 onwards), Current Chemical Reactions (1986 onwards), Emerging Sources Citation Index (2015 onwards), Current Chemical Reactions (1985 onwards), Index Chemicus (1993 onwards).

Change "Search in:" to use: BIOSIS Citation Index (1926 onwards), Current Contents Connect (1998 onwards), Data Citation Index (1990 onwards), Derwent Innovations Index (1966 onwards), KCI-Korean Journal Database (1980 onwards), Medline (1950 onwards), PrePrint Citation Index (1991 onwards), ProQuest Dissertatoins & Theses Citation Index (1637 onwards), SciELO Citation Index (2002 onwards), Zoological Record (1864 onwards).

Help:

Publisher userguide

Finding articles which have in their reference lists a work you found useful ('cited reference searching'):

Cited Reference Searching (pdf)

 

Journal Citation Reports (JCR): 

Journal Impact Factors and other measures on JCR (pdf)

Related Links