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Social Work

Community Care Inform Drop in sessions

Every Month Community Care Inform hosts an interactive demonstration of how their platform can support you. We look forward to you joining a session and learning how Community Care Inform supports you both with essay writing and understanding social work theory and provides support with your placements through practice scenario videos, webinars, podcasts and much more!

The demonstration will only be 30 minutes, we will go through the basics of logging in, searching for content and highlighting key topic areas and various content options. The next sessions will be on 13/03/24, 10/04/24 and 8/05/24 at 14:00-14:30.

To join one of these demonstrations, you will be provided with a Microsoft Teams link through an Outlook invite, to sign up, please click here.

How to find journal articles

Do you want to find journal articles on a topic or look for a specific article?

Use Discovery - input your topic or the details of a journal article to search across most of the Library's resources

Discovery

Search for journal articles
More search options

If you have a journal title use Journal Finder to check if the Library has access to full text.

Journal Finder

If you know the name of a Journal, enter the title here to check if it's available in the Library

 

 

To link through to a complete list of e-journals: A-Z list

What are journals?

They are:Journals

  • like magazines but of a scholarly nature
  • published at regular intervals with no predetermined end
  • contain articles on a variety of topics
  • the articles are written by different authors
  • sometimes they also contain reviews and other information
  • in printed and electronic formats

Why Should I use them?

  • journal time is much quicker than for a book
  • using information from journals will keep you up to date and informed of new developments in your subject
  • journals articles are more specific than books.  They give you more detailed information in a more scholarly and concise format
  • subject may not yet (or may never) be covered in books
  • quality research - academic reputation - peer reviewed.

What is scholarly/peer reviewed?

  • Written by an academic, who is a specialist in the subject
  • Submitted to an editor, who then passes the work to other professionals or 'peers' for a critiques, the work is then passed back to the original writer for changes to be made before being published
  • Longer articles, heavily text based
  • Charts, tables, statistics and images
  • Properly referenced with a list of references at the end of the article.

Databases for your subject

For more specialist searching use an online database

What are online databases?

Databases are specialist search engines that search for quality information, such as journal articles, in specific subject areas.

The databases below are listed in order of relevance for your subject. Hover over the icons to see what help is available.

For help searching the databases contact your SSHL information team. Details on the Home page

Please note that all databases are provided for educational use only

Help - journal articles

The following guides will help you to develop your skills in finding journal articles:

Finding Journals

Critical thinking - what it is and why it matters.

Doing a Literature Search

Developing Keywords

Evidence Based Practice

Evidence Based Practice is about using the best available evidence on the effectiveness of an intervention as a basis for professional decision making in practice.

For information and resources for Evidence Based Practice, see the Evidence Based Practice LibGuide

 

Need to Search Grey Literature

Grey literature is material which is not usually published through normal channels.  Examples of grey literature include: government reports, theses, conference papers and abstracts, discussion papers, newsletters, PowerPoint presentations, best practice documents, guidelines and protocols. 

The helpsheet below details the best sources to use to find grey literature in the area of health and social care.

Public Health England have also compiled an index of grey literature and the link to this is below.

Inter Library Loans

Have you found a useful resource that we do not have access to?  Undergraduate students doing their final assessment projects/dissertations, postgraduate students and staff are eligible for inter library loans. See the Inter Library Loan Guide for more information.