Social Work
Welcome to the Social Work subject guide - your guide to using the library resources, services and facilities for your subject.
Finding Library Resources - DiscoverEd
DiscoverEd is the one of the main ways to find the resources that are available to you. Your University Login gives you access to DiscoverEd where you can explore many of the online and physical resources, as well as the special repositories within the university collection.
Not everything within the University collection can be identified using DiscoverEd and you may also need to use specific databases to find additional material.
Need help searching DiscoverEd? Have a look at the help pages and FAQs.
Search for Social Work literature
- IBSS (International Bibliography of Social Science)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.
- Social Sciences Citation IndexPart of Web of Science Core Collection. Indexes 2,100 core journals in all areas of the social sciences, plus relevant items from 3,500 scientific and technical journals. Contains over 2.3 million records.
- Social Services AbstractsBibliographic coverage of current research focussed on social work, human service and related areas, including social welfare, social policy and human development.
- Social Work OnlineSocial 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.
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)