Social Work
Welcome to the Social Work subject guide - your guide to using the library resources, services and facilities for your subject.
Research a topic
A major part of your learning at university is doing your own research for assignments, projects, your dissertation, etc. This means you need to be able to do a comprehensive search for books, journal articles, and other sources relevant to a specific topic that provide a base of knowledge, help you explore a topic and allow you to form your own ideas and opinions on the topic. This is often referred to as literature searching.
On this page we have gathered together a range of online resources that allow you to do this kind of searching and help you do better research.
For more guidance on literature searching see our Literature Searching guide.
Finding scholarly literature
Use these databases to search for scholarly literature e.g. journal articles, book chapters & reviews, conference reports and proceedings, etc., for your subject area.
Using DiscoverEd to find scholarly literature
As well as searching the Library's physical and local collections i.e. books, e-books, journals, etc., DiscoverEd is also searching a wide range of the e-journals and databases the Library has access to so it's easy to find scholarly literature. DiscoverEd is always a good place to start your searching.
Using Google Scholar to find scholarly literature
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Like DiscoverEd, Google Scholar can be a good place to start your search but it does not allow for advanced or complex searching as in the databases.
Google Scholar may not provide access to full-text, however, by linking to the Library you can access full-text where there is a University subscription.
- Select Settings from the top of the Google Scholar Home Page
- Select Library Links
- Search for University of Edinburgh. Select it from the list and Save your settings
You will now see FindIt@Edinburgh links next to items in your Google Scholar results that you can use to access the full-text.
This short video below demonstrates how to do this.
Newspapers and news media, TV and film
Use these key databases to search for and access current full-text newspaper and news sources articles, including both UK and international titles.
- Factiva Please note that whilst Factiva can be used for academic research it is read only, bulk downloading and/or analytics of the content is restricted by the database provider. Permitted users are limited to download what can be reasonably read in one day. Excessive downloading may result in your access and the access of other University users being restricted. For more information see the Factiva User Guide - https://proquest.libguides.com/factiva.
The Library has access to a large number of newspaper databases that allow you to search for both current and archive content.
Use these databases to search for and view TV news programmes, documentaries, interviews, films, etc.
- Box of Broadcasts (BoB) For access on and off-campus click the Sign In button, type University of Edinburgh in the 'Where are you from?' box and log in with EASE. The first time you log in you may be asked for your University email address.
If you're going to be using "news" sources as part of your research then it is worth taking a look at our guide on misinformation, disinformation and "fake news" which gives an overview of this area and strategies to help you meet this issue.
Grey Literature
- Grey literatureSources of literature which may be considered unpublished, or non-standard academic literature, eg theses and technical reports. In addition, reports from government or organisations working in your field of interest which may be of the right standard for your work.
Databases for other subject areas
The academic field of Social Work crosses over with a number of other disciplines. Depending on your research area it may be worthwhile looking at the databases available in other subject areas e.g.
See a full list of subjects and their recommended databases at: