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Social Work - Home
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Courses
Course information is available for the Social Work undergraduate and Master's programs, and Indigenous Social Work undergraduate program.
Connect from Off Campus
Most of the Library's online resources are available to you from anywhere off campus. See: LU Proxy Accounts.
Library Instruction
To learn more about the library and its resources and how you can exploit them to your advantage, register in the Research Skills Tutorial on D2L. There are several sections in the tutorial with a short quiz at the end of each; at the end you will receive a Certificate of Completion. Many professors require you to take this tutorial--and once you finish it, you can save your certificate to reprint as often as necessary.
We can hold special classes at the request of at least 5 students. If you would like to arrange a special class, or you think your course would benefit from some in-class library instruction, please ask your professor to contact the librarian responsible for your faculty to set up some sessions.
More Help
In the library: The Library User Assistance Desk to your immediate left as you enter the library is a good place to start.
By email: Email the librarian responsible for your faculty for a reply during regular working hours.
Research consultations: Book a research consultation with the librarian responsible for your faculty by Zoom or phone.
By chat: With our "Ask the Library" service. For more information, see About Ask a Librarian.
For Distance Education students: Telephone: 1-800-661-1058, ext. 2 or email: bibdesmaraislib@laurentian.ca
Get Started
Quick Tips on Preparing For Research
Before you start:
- understand the key terms you may be using as well as the general area that interests you;
- think about ways to narrow your topic, making it as specific as possible (unless you have been given a specific topic to research!);
- create a thesis statement;
- list the main concepts (key words) included in your thesis statement (research question), then based on your readings;
- find as many synonyms as you can for each main concept. You are now ready to start searching in the library's catalogue and databases.
When you are looking for definitions or if you don’t know much about a specific subject, reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias become invaluable because they contain relatively short—and understandable—articles. These articles often lay out the parameters of a subject and can assist you in trying to narrow your topic. Often such articles are accompanied by lists of readings (bibliographies) which allow you to explore your topic further.
Dictionaries and Encyclopedias for Social Work
Subject-Specific encyclopedias and dictionaries clarify unfamiliar words and discipline-specific concepts. When you are looking for definitions or if you are not familiar with a subject, reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias become invaluable because they contain relatively short, authoritative articles. These articles lay out the parameters of a topic and can assist you in providing a specific focus. Often such articles are accompanied by lists of readings or bibliographies which allow you to explore the topic further. All of the resources listed below link either to the library catalogue record for each book or to an online resource or website
The Social Work Dictionary (in print) 5th ed. 2003.
Encyclopedia of Social Work (online): This new edition of the Encyclopedia includes coverage of areas that have come to the fore since the 1995 publication of the 19th edition, including demographic changes from immigration, technology, the implications of managed care, faith-based assistance, evidence-based practice, gerontology, and trauma and disaster. Each article is written and signed by a top academic or social work practitioner and includes a bibliography for further reading.
Related Dictionaries
- APA dictionary of psychology. 2015. 2nd edition. Online.
- Cambridge dictionary of psychology. 2009. Online.
Related Encyclopedias
Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol, and Addictive Behavior: This resource contains more than 700 articles focusing on the social, political, and medical issues surrounding addictions.
The Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence: This resource covers violence according to categories, including theories, syndromes, disorders, civil and criminal code violations, and research methods.
Encyclopedia of Counseling: Changes and Challenges in the 21st Century: This resource is a four-volume work, with more than 600 entries divided by category (changes and challenges, personal/emotional counseling, cross-cultural counseling, and career counseling).
Encyclopedia of Research Design: This resource is interdisciplinary, but provides extensive coverage into various research methods, as well as tables, equations, and figures used in actual studies.
Get Books and Theses
Why Use Books?
- Books are extremely valuable resources when doing in-depth research on a topic! Authors have hundreds of pages to give detailed explanations and background information surrounding the various facets of your research interest.
- Using this kind of in-depth information will make it easier to form a research question or thesis statement (or even spark your inspiration)
- The bibliographies found in books are extensive, and will point you to other resources to add to your own resource list.
- Remember: scholars write journal articles under the assumption that you already have a relatively thorough understanding of the topic – this means that you will likely not find the foundational information needed for your topic in the beginning stages of your research process. In this sense, books become indispensable
Searching the Catalogue
The catalogue is your primary tool for finding books in the J.N. Desmarais Library. You can also use the catalogue to find other materials, including government publications and journals (including individual articles).
You can search the catalogue by:
- Title
- Author/Creator
- Subject
- Call Number
When you know the book you are searching for, pick Title or Author; when you are searching for a topic, start with Keyword unless you know the exact Subject heading describing your topic.
More on searching the Catalogue is available in Module 5 of the Research Skills Tutorial in D2L.
E-Books
- Some may be located by using the library’s catalogue and selecting "Books & eBooks" as the "Material Type" and then further filtering your results by "Available online".
- E-books can also be located by searching in e-book collections. Searching in these collections is the same as searching in a database.
Recommended E-Book Collections
Master's major papers
The practicum reports and Master's major papers written by graduates of the Master of Social Work program are available to download from Laurentian's institutional repository, LU|Zone|UL.
Theses
In addition to books, you may wish to search for book-length Master's theses or Ph.D dissertations.
You can search Omni to find theses and dissertations.
If you are also looking for recent theses or dissertations produced by Laurentian graduates, check out LUZONE. Note that since 2013, before graduation all Masters and Doctoral candidates MUST deposit their theses or dissertations in this repository.
WorldCat
Get Articles
Articles: Quick Tips
The databases to the right provide references to many scholarly journal articles and papers.
- Start off with keyword searches expressing your topic. Keyword searching crosses all fields.
- Use Search Operators such as "OR" and "AND" to expand or reduce your results.
- Review those items that look relevant, then, exploit the details within those entries to help lead you to other relevant articles.
- Pay attention to the subject headings (often called "descriptors") to see how the database describes your topic and use them to find related articles.
- Find other papers written by the same author; these will typically be on similar subjects.
- Follow citation trails: other articles that have cited this article will probably be on a related subject and will include citations to other articles of interest.
- For more Secrets of Searching a Database, review that section in How to Research Like a Librarian.
Peer Review
Peer Review is the evaluation of creative work by scholars in the same field in order to maintain or enhance the quality of the work in that field.
In the case of peer reviewed journals, which are usually academic, peer review generally refers to the evaluation of the articles in them prior to publication. For more, check out this definition of peer review.
- To ascertain whether a journal is peer reviewed, consult Ulrichsweb.
Recommended Starting Databases
Newspapers and Magazines
Sometimes you need to find current information yet unavailable in the peer reviewed literature. For inspiration, take a look at the subject guide Newspapers and Magazines.
Some Related Databases
Social Work is a truly interdisciplinary discipline, and so, depending on the topic you are researching, you may wish to explore it in the subject databases of the following disciplines: Economics, Gerontology, Law and Justice, Nursing, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology.
In addition, you may find useful information in Social Policy in Ontario, the Homeless Hub as well as following interdisplinary databases:
Citation Sources
When researching a paper, it is useful to consult the citations used by the author of an article that you find relevant. But that article itself may have been cited by other authors after it was first written. Two sources help you identify such citations:
Getting Articles @ Laurentian
In any database, when you see an article that interests you, click on it and, unless the article is available within the database itself, within the record you will see an image that says "Get it @ Laurentian":
When you click on that, you will arrive at a menu which will lead to an electronic copy of the article you want, or, if not available electronically, to Laurentian's catalogue which will allow you to check if the article is available in print in the library, and if not, to a final link which allows you to order the item through Interlibrary loan.
Get Films
Need a Film Not in Laurentian's Online Film Collections?
Consult: Watmedia (Provincial Multi-media Catalogue). Material held by Laurentian may be signed out in the library. To order a film not available at Laurentian, please email LUFilmLibrary@laurentian.ca and specify the date(s) you require the item.
Questions: Please contact Ginette Gervais, coordinator of interlibrary loan.
Get Data and Statistics
Data and Statistics
The library has access to a vast amount of data and statistcs, and a specialized librarian available for consultation in this area. To learn more, please consult the subject guide Data and Statistics.
Citing Sources and Zotero
Why cite?
We cite sources to acknowledge the work of others, as well as to avoid academic dishonesty or plagiarism.
For strategies to help you avoid plagiarizing work, see this series of short videos:
- Introduction to Avoiding Plagiarism (5m 6s)
- Avoiding Plagiarism with Paraphrasing (5m 27s)
- Avoiding Plagiarism with Direct Quotes (4m 50s)
Citation Styles in Laurentian's Social Work Program
At Laurentian, professors will specify the citation style to be used. In Social Work, APA is the style that is normally required. Our guide to citation styles offers a quick introduction to the APA (and other) citation styles.
Managing citations with Zotero
is a free, web-based citation manager that allows you to:
- Directly import references from article databases, the library catalogue, e-book collections, etc.
- Manage and organize your references.
- Create a bibliography.
- Share your references with others
- Add in-text citation and a bibliography directly into your assignment
To enable Zotero's Library Lookup service to find full-text documents licensed by Laurentian University, set Edit->Preferences->Advanced->General->Resolver to https://omni.laurentian.ca/openurl/01OCUL_LU/01OCUL_LU:OMNI
Getting started with Zotero:
- Follow the Managing Citations guide for Laurentian
- Contact the librarian supporting your faculty
- Consult Zotero's documentation, such as the Quick Start Guide or Tutorials