Social Policy
Welcome to the Social Policy subject guide - your guide to using the library resources, services and facilities for your subject.
Finding Library Resources - DiscoverEd
DiscoverEd
DiscoverEd is the library's discovery tool and library catalogue. Use it to search for books, journals, articles, databases, online access and much more. You can find a simple guide we've made for getting started with DiscoverEd here (Microsoft Sway).
Other useful help pages from our website include:
- Searching DiscoverEd
- DiscoverEd FAQs
- Using the Library
- How to borrow and renew books
- Accessing e-resources
Don't forget that you can ask the Library Helpdesk staff for advice and assistance.
Key databases for Social Policy
- Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA)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.
- International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)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.
- PAIS InternationalThis resource covers issues in the public debate through selective coverage of a wide variety of international sources including journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more.
- Policy CommonsBuilt around a directory of over 21,000 policy organisations, the Policy Commons database 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, providing a unique body of knowledge that can otherwise be difficult to find. The search interface also enables searching for tables within reports. Registered users can receive alerts of material added to the database.
- Sociology Source UltimateThis 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.
Your Academic Support Librarians
Resource lists and Subject guides
Resource Lists are online reading lists that can signpost you to key reading materials. Some of your courses may have a Resource List embedded in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) but you can also access them directly. Full details are available on the Resource Lists: Information for Students webpage.
Other subject guides can be a useful source of ideas and information. 
Beginner's guide
This is a short video introducing you to the University Library and it's resources, services and facilities.
- Beginner's guide to the Library - original videoFollow this link to see original video on MediaHopper, with downloadable presentation slides.
Online learning
The Library provides access to many e-resources, but we also provide lots of other services and support for students on online learning programmes.
- Library services for online learning students
- How to set up and use the Virtual Private Network (VPN)