Starting Points
Encyclopedia of Social Work from the National Association of Social Workers and Oxford University Press -- a great starting place, policy on many social work topics.
Comprehensive Handbook of Social Work and Social Welfare Contains many sections on Social Policy and Policy Practice.
The Green Book (2012) is a key resource for federal programs. It provides updated statistics and information on programs such as Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment Compensation, Foster Care and welfare. Additionally, it includes a discussion of related issues, such as the well-being of the elderly and of children and families.
Congressional Publication contains congressional documents (hearings, committee prints, documents, and legislative histories) which are searchable through this fulltext database. CRS Research Reports are particularly helpful for overviews of federal policies on an array of topics.
MetaLib and USA.gov are two ways to search a variety of US Government sources with lots of information on social policies at the federal level.
Find Books and E-Books
UCB: Use OskiCat to find books related to your topic at UC Berkeley. Oskicat will show you where it's located, and will also show you the Library of Congress Subject Heading -- which can help you find material other relevant books.
UC: Not enough books at Berkeley? Use Melvyl to find more books at other campuses in the UC system. Clickon the REQUEST button (in the detailed view of a catalog record) to request the item through Interlibrary Loan.
World: Still want more? You can search thousands of libraries through WorldCat on FirstSearch and then request the material through UC e-links or directly via Interlibrary Loan.
Google Books: Library catalogs don't search inside of books. Google Books can help you identify the book you need, then click on "Find in a Library" to see if we have it.
Find Articles
We have hundreds of research databases which help you find articles (and more) on a wide variety of topics. A few of the core resources for this class are listed below.
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Social Services Abstracts
Indexes journals worldwide related to the fields of social work, human services, and social policy.
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Sociological Abstracts
Core database in sociology, many overlaps with social welfare.
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PAIS International
For the public policy aspect of social welfare, this is a useful index. Also indexes government documents.
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Academic Search Complete
An interdisciplinary index to articles in over 10,000 journals, many are available fulltext.
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Family and Society Studies Worldwide
Indexes scholarly journals (and more) related to social science research about the family and society.
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PolicyFile
Index to public policy reports from a wide range of think tanks and Non-governmental organizations.
UC eLinks and Citation Linker
Sometimes the database you search doesn't link to the fulltext -- it only gives the citation. Click the 
button to see if Berkeley has it online, and if not, it will check for a print version. And if we don't have it at all, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.
What if there isn't a button??? Sometimes you find an article in a bibliography, a book or a footnote -- and you want to see if we have it. The Citation Linker searches through our online databases to see if it's available fulltext. If not, it sets up a search for the paper journal in Melvyl. And if we don't have it at Berkeley, it lets you request it through Interlibrary Loan.
Search Tips
- Use synonyms -- there are many ways to express a concept (teenager or teenagers or adolescent)
- Use truncation to get different forms of the word, for example teenage* will retrieve teenagers, teenager, teenaged, etc.
- Use quotation marks when you want an "exact phrase"