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Finding Background Information:
Encyclopedia Of Social Work (Ready REF HV 35 .S6)
Social Worker's Desk Reference (Ready REF HV 40 .S6464 2002)
Newspapers can be an excellent source of information, especially for an emerging phenomenon or local issues. Although usually brief, newspaper articles can often lead you to experts on a topic, advocacy groups, or help identify key incidents and players. From the MU libraries' Databases page, click on the Newspapers category for a listing of choices.
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Finding Journal Articles:
First, try the following general databases:
- Academic Search Premier (EbscoHost)
Index to major journals and magazines in all subject areas. Many articles are full-text. Updated continually. Generally, coverage is 1984 to date. Click on "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" to limit search results to research articles.
- CQ Researcher
Provides extensive background information and discussion of the pros and cons of current issues of the day such as welfare reform, child poverty, foster care, adoption, child abuse.
For more in-depth research, search subject specialized journal article databases. Begin at the MU Libraries' Gateway. Click on Databases, and click on the subject area, Social Sciences. Then choose Social Work or another subject that seems most closely related to your topic (for example, if you wanted to look for articles about the school lunch program, you could choose the categories Public Policy, or Education). From the subject list, select one of the databases and follow instructions on how to conduct a search. Every database has a slightly different interface, but all have help pages that contain tips and/or tutorials.
Following is a selected list of subject-related databases that may be of interest:
- Social Services Abstracts
CSA Social Services Abstracts provides coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. The database abstracts and indexes over 1,406 serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, and citations to book reviews. Many links to full text.
- Social Work Abstracts
Social Work Abstracts indexes research articles in social work and related fields. Coverage is 1977 to date. Links to some full-text.
- PsycINFO
PsycINFO Indexes and abstracts books, journal articles and technical reports dealing with psychology. Coverage is 1887 to date. Some links to full-text.
- PsycARTICLES
PsycARTICLES is a database of full-text articles from more than 50 journals published by the American Psychological Association.
- ERIC
ERIC provides access to the educational and related literature available in periodicals published worldwide and in the ERIC documents microfiche collection. Covers 1966 to date. Some full-text.
- P.A. I. S.
P.A.I.S (Public Affairs Information Service) covers the range of the social sciences, with emphasis on national and international economic, political, and public policy issues. The database provides indexing to periodical articles, books, federal, state and local documents, agency publications, yearbooks, and directories. Coverage is 1972 to date. Some links to full-text.
- Sociological Abstracts
Sociological Abstracts Indexes and abstracts journals in sociology as well as books, dissertations and sociological association papers. Coverage is 1974 to date. Some links to full-text.
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| Finding the Full-text of Journal Articles: Find it@MU
If you're looking at results in one of the databases listed above, just click on the  button next to the article citation. The article will display if it's available electronically. If there is no online access, you'll be give the opportunity to look for a print copy in the MERLIN Catalog
If you have an article reference, but are not currently in a database, go to the MU Libraries' Gateway page and click on the Electronic Journals link in the upper right hand side of the screen to enter Find it @ MU. Once in http://mulibraries.1cate.com/ you're given the opportunity to search for a specific article or journal title. If electronic coverage is not available, check the MERLIN Catalog to see if we have a print subscription to the journal.
MU Libraries does not subscribe to all journal titles. If you find a journal article that you need, but cannot find the article using Find it @ MU, fill out a journal article request form which is available from the Request Forms link near the top of the MU Libraries Gateway page. You will need to register the first time you use our interlibrary loan service which is called ILL @ MU. Usually you will receive the article electronically via e-mail within a few days of placing your request.
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Selected Recommended Journals for Child Welfare/Social Work Administration:
All of these journals, and hundreds more, are indexed in the databases listed above. You can search the databases by key word or subject to identify specific articles.
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| Finding Library Books
From the MU Libraries' Gateway, choose MERLIN Catalog. Type in words describing the issue or policy you are researching. Once you have a list of hits, select one that looks on-target, then examine the subject headings for that item. Try clicking on one of the subject headings for that book, to retrieve similar books. Subject heading searches generally pull up more relevant hits than a keyword search.
If you do not find enough books on your topic to meet your needs, change your search to "ALL MERLIN." By doing so you will be checking the library holdings at UMSL, UMKC, UMR, and MU all at once. Still not enough? Click on the MOBIUS Union Catalog button. This expands your search to about 50 additional libraries in our network. Most books you find through MERLIN or MOBIUS are requestable online, just click on the "Request Item" link. Books requested through MERLIN or MOBIUS take two to three working days to arrive.
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Child Welfare Advocacy Groups/Think Tanks:
- Annie E. Casey Foundation
Advocates, conducts research and supports programs to benefit disadvantaged children and families; known for its Kids Count Data Book, an annual compilation of state-by-state statistics.
- Child Trends
Conducts research about children and publishes reports and statistics on its Child Trends Data Bank.
- Child Welfare League of America
America's oldest and largest child welfare organization advocates, suggests standards and educates welfare workers.
- Children and Family Research Center
Leading university-based institution for studying children, families and child welfare services.
- Children's Bureau
Agency of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department that supports states' delivery of child welfare services, publishes reports and data on its Web site, maintains hotlines for reporting child and domestic abuse and runaway, missing or exploited children (1-800-4ACHILD).
- National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Association
Provides leadership, consultation and resources for more than 900 CASA programs across the country whose nearly 70,000 volunteers serve as advocates for 280,000 abused or neglected children.
- Pew Commission on Foster Care
Blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel that proposed more federal funding and more flexibility for states to spend it.
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Sources of Government Information:
- Finding Government Agencies
This could be as easy as doing a Google U.S. Government search on your program. Try typing in "school lunch." You'll find the first hit is the U. S. Department of Agriculture School Lunch Home Page.
If you would like to get of sense of how many federal government agencies are actually out there, and how they are organized in relation to one another, browse the United States Government Manual online or look at the paper version in the library. If you are looking for organizational charts for state agencies, the State and Local Government on the Net web site is easy to navigate. Missouri has a Guide to Missouri State Government which gives brief synopses of state departments and divisions.
- Finding Government Budgets
Warning: It is not always easy to find a simple dollar amount showing the amount of government spending on a particular program. Sometimes several levels of government contribute funds to a single program - states, counties, municipalities, federal level agencies. When you do find statistical tables, it might divide out the money in strange ways, tempting you perform your own calculations. Or you might find figures lumped together when you hoped they'd be divided by state, county, by type of recipient, etc. Yet there is a wealth of information available on the federal and state budget websites, and you are sure to understand more about how your program is funded when you study this information. Note that budgets tell not only the plan for spending for the upcoming fiscal year, but they also give figures for actual spending in past years.
Federal budget: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/
Missouri budget: http://www.oa.mo.gov/bp/execbudgets.htm
- Finding Government Publications
Search the MERLIN catalog for government publications. If you would like to look for federal government publications published 1976-presetn, it is best to use the Marcive Web Docs library database if you want to be thorough. If you need to do historical research on a program, and prefer federal materials published before 1976, the paper index called Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications located in the Documents Reference area is your best bet.
- Finding Analysis
You will certainly find plenty of analysis in library books and in journal articles. There are also two government sources of analysis. The first source is U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports. The other is hearings held before congressional committees.
The GAO's purpose is to examine government programs and operations, and determine whether they are efficient and effective. GAO reports are catalogued in MERLIN, but you can also access reports online through the GAO's own website. From the GAO main page, click on "More Search Options," and then on the word "Advanced." This search screen allows you to search for keywords or phrases in the publication title or in the full text.
Hearings before congressional committees can include testimony from a variety of experts, organization leaders, public servants, academics, or sometimes "just plain folks" who hold differing views on a topic. These invitees come before the committee and present their best arguments. In addition, they may submit printed material "for the record," such as privately published reports, articles or relevant newspaper clippings. After testifying, congresspersons might ask questions. The full text testimony, the question-and-answer session, and additional materials are all printed in a report which is essentially the hearing transcript. These hearings are catalogued in MERLIN and available for checkout from the library, just as regular books are. You can use MERLIN to find hearings, but if you would like to limit your search just to hearings, you can use LexisNexis Congressional to do that. Simply click on the Advanced Search tab, then scroll down until you see item types. Check the box for "Hearings" and uncheck all the other boxes.
There is a database that is very useful for public policy analysis - the Law Reviews section of LexisNexis Academic. It is in the library's list of Databases. Once inside LexisNexis Academic, choose "Legal Research" from the left navigation bar. Select "Law Reviews," then click on the "Guided Search" tab. This search screen will allow you to search for keywords or phrases in the title of an article, or in the full text. Law reviews are enormously useful because they generally provide historical context for any issue, and point out the most significant (or infamous) pieces of legislation that affected a policy arena.
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