Subject Resources for Social Work

The collections provided below are electronic resources (eResources) and give you instant access to high quality scholarly research through journal articles and databases. You can access these eResources 24/7 and each collection has its own to help pages to guide you through accessing and navigating the resources. If you need any additional support to develop your information literacy and research skills please visit the Further Help and Support tab.

Key journals and databases

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) is one of the world’s largest search engines, providing open access to millions of academic documents from thousands of content providers.
Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Complete provides access to top nursing and allied health journals, evidence-based care sheets and quick lessons providing overviews of disease and conditions, biomedicine, consumer health, physical therapy, psychological aspects of social work and nutrition.
Community Care Inform Adults provides critical information in a quick and accessible format to help social care professionals, working with disabled and older people, make and evidence their decisions.
Community Care Inform Children provides critical information in a quick and accessible format to help social work professionals make and evidence their decisions, designed for children and family social workers.
COnnecting REpositories (CORE) provides a comprehensive, open access, bibliographic database of the world’s scholarly literature, collecting and indexing research from repositories and journals.
Education Research Complete is the world’s largest database of education journals providing open access to thousands of journals, many of which are full-text.
Emerald Insight is an industry leading digital research platform providing access to a range of full-text journals on a range of professional and practitioner disciplines, including management, marketing, information science, engineering, health and social care and many more.
Family Law Reports contains verbatim case reports of every important Family Division, Court of Appeal, House of Lords and European courts case, including practice directions, covering family law, public and private and child law. Each case report includes a concise headnote summary of the case, the issues involved and the points of law raised.
Health Research Premium Collection provides central access to hundreds of full-text journals covering nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine and consumer health.
MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) premier bibliographic database containing millions of journal articles, references, citations and abstracts in life sciences and biomedicine.
PsycInfo is a bibliographic database from the American Psychological Association (APA) containing peer-reviewed journals, books and dissertations on topics related to psychology.
Social Care Online from Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) is the UK’s largest database of information and research on all aspects of social care and social work, including legislation, government documents, practice and guidance, systematic reviews, research briefings, reports, journal articles and websites.

These resources are great for use across all disciplines and programmes of study.

Academic Search Premier is a multidisciplinary database with more than 4,600 magazines and journals, including full-text access to nearly 3,900 scholarly and peer-reviewed journals.
Box of Broadcasts is an on-demand TV and radio service for educational research brought to you from Learning on Screen. The academically focused service enables you to watch and record programmes from over 75 free-to-air channels in the UK and search an extensive archive of over 2.2 million broadcasts. The service includes ten foreign language channels and allows you to create clips and playlists to share or embed into presentations.
Browzine gives you access to top journals from your area of study in the Browzine Scholarly Journal Room. Browzine is a browsable newsstand of the University Library’s top journals, which lets you easily discover, read and monitor the key journals in your field. Learn more about Browzine in this short video.
CREDO Reference is a general knowledge database and a great place to begin exploring your research topic as it has thousands of introductory level reference titles, millions of articles, and lots of images, charts, maps and more covering a wide variety of subjects.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Gale Research Complete provides access to proprietary databases, eBooks, scholarly articles and rare primary sources that can enhance your research, learning and discovery, including thousands of journals and other authoritative sources in Academic OneFile.
Libby (OverDrive) is a reading for pleasure collection of eBooks, audiobooks and magazines, providing you with a new digital library via the Libby app open 24/7 to all Edge Hill students and staff.
LinkedIn Learning gives you full, free, unlimited access to thousands of high quality online courses and video tutorials written by industry experts. The courses cover many topics including using a wide range of software, and personal development skills in education, public speaking, employability and much more. You can even claim and display certificates for courses you complete on your LinkedIn profile, to give your online CV a boost!
Overton is the world’s largest searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers. You can access this platform with your University email address to search the literature and find out who is influencing policies and policy makers.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely accepted as the most complete record of the English language ever assembled.
Oxford Reference is an online reference database, covering a wide range of subject areas, providing access to millions of digitised materials from across Oxford University Press’s Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses is the world’s most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day.
Sage Datasets is a collection of US and international datasets sourced from governmental, commercial and private organisations, allowing you to search and browse billions of datasets, compare and contrast variables of interest, and create customised exportable charts and tables.
Sage Research Methods is a database which supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through each step of the research process. From writing your research question and choosing a method, to analysing data, writing up and publishing the findings. Resources include a methods map, books, reference works, journal articles, podcasts and instructional videos from world-leading academics. With information on qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods, Sage Research Methods is the ideal tool to support you through your research.
ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scientific database offering access to thousands of journal articles and book chapters for subjects including physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, sports and physical activities, social sciences and humanities.
Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database, containing 24,600 journals from 5,000 publishers. It is excellent for literature reviews or for finding out what has been published in your area as it can locate high quality journal articles, book chapters and more, for any subject.
Springer Link provides researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols and reference works.
Statista is a comprehensive statistics platform offering over 1.5 million data sets. Find studies and reports, forecasts and surveys from over 400 industries that you can download in a range of formats. There are also video tutorials and a quick user guide to help you make the most of Statista.
Taylor and Francis Online is a collection of multidisciplinary journals covering subjects from arts, humanities, business, computer sciences, social sciences, geography, sports, social work, education and many more.
Wiley Online Library is a leading scholarly articles databases providing access to thousands of full-text multidisciplinary journals, covering life, health and physical sciences, nursing, psychology, social work, education, media, technology, business, social sciences and the humanities.

Newspapers can be a useful way of keeping up to date with current affairs or recent events and newspaper archives usually contain issues with less recent information, which is useful for finding articles of a more historical interest.

British Library Newspapers (1800-1900) contains a large range of national, regional and local newspapers from the period. These include the Illustrated Police News, the Chartist Northern Star and the Morning Chronicle.
Daily Mail Historical Archive (1896-2004) contains news stories and images that capture twentieth century culture and society. Offering full page and article images, with searchable full-text back to the first issue, this is a useful resource for historical research.
Financial Times contains news and analysis about the world of business and finance reaching back as far as 1999. Business and Economics students, or any researchers wishing to subscribe to daily updates, would benefit from accessing the Financial Times direct. Anyone wishing to research older content would benefit from visiting the Financial Times via Gale OneFile.
Gale OneFile: News contains articles from over 2,300 newspapers from around the world. These include major British newspapers, as well as United States and Australian titles. It also has thousands of images, radio and TV broadcasts and transcripts.
The Guardian and The Observer Historical Newspapers (1791-2003) provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
Illustrated London News Historical Archive (1842-2003) was the world’s first fully illustrated weekly newspaper, marking a revolution in journalism and news reporting, presenting a vivid picture of British and world events, including news of war, disaster, ceremonies, the arts and science.
Lexis+ Newspapers provides access to an archive of UK national and regional newspapers, with coverage from the 1990s to the present day.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection is Reverend Charles Burney’s collection of early English news media. A comprehensive primary source for this period, which helps track the development of news.
Times Digital Archive contains every issue of The Times from 1785 to 2019. You can search by keyword or for a particular issue and each story appears as it looks in the original print copy of the newspaper.
Times Educational Supplement is the UK’s foremost weekly publication covering primary, secondary and further education and can be accessed by creating a personal account with your Edge Hill University email address.

Subject	Call Number
Ethics and Values in Social Work	174.9
Social Work Law	344.2 – 344.4
Social Work Theory	361
Social Policy	361.6

Key journals and databases

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