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Social Work
This guide provides descriptions of commonly used library resources for practice, research, and scholarship in the field of Social Work.
On the next page, 2) Craft your search, you will learn how to transform your topic into a research question and then how to transform your research question into an effective search strategy.
Don't Panic! Watch This (Run-time: 3 minutes)
4 Steps to Designing your Topic (Run-time: 1 minute)
Background Information
Reference works, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks, provide background information on a topic and are especially useful at the beginning of a research project. They can help you get an overview of a topic, gather fast facts, define terms, theories, and people in an area, focus your argument and find further readings written by experts in the field.
The following online reference works are recommended for gathering background information in Social Work and Psychology:
Online collection of dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographical sources, quotations, bilingual dictionaries, and measurement conversions covering topics from the arts to the sciences.
Oxford Bibliographies presents constantly updated articles that contain citations (with annotations) and commentaries for sources across the disciplines. Users can search topics and gather relevant journal article and book citations, online resources, data sources, and more.
Oxford Clinical Psychology provides full-text access to titles in Oxford's global clinical psychology publishing program, including professional reference books, important scholarly and research works, and therapist guides and workbooks in the "Treatments That Work" series.
With 159 chapters collaboratively written by luminaries in the profession, this comprehensive guide provides the most recent conceptual knowledge and empirical evidence to aid in the understanding of the rapidly changing field of social work. Each chapter is short and contains practical information in addition to websites and updated references.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, is the most comprehensive, current, and critical resource for clinical practice available to today's mental health clinicians and researchers of all orientations. The information contained in the manual is also valuable to other physicians and health professionals, including psychologists, counselors, nurses, and occupational and rehabilitation therapists, as well as social workers and forensic and legal specialists.
Social Workers' Desk Reference by 
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) by 