LibGuides: Social Work: Reference Resources

Chat with a Librarian

More Librarian Help

Be aware that when using Ask a Librarian (above box) , you are usually not chatting with a La Salle librarian. Ask a Librarian is a 24/7 service staffed by librarians throughout Pennsylvania and the U.S. If you cannot get through at any time please leave an email address and we will get back to you as soon as we can! If you don't enter an email address, we cannot help you!

Using Summon to Find e-Reference

Summon, our Web Scale Discovery software, allows you to easily find content in e-Reference books. It does not cover ALL our e-Reference books, but most are covered.

The box above allows you to search Summon for only reference material. You may want to add further filters, such as date and discipline (look at the left hand column). Remember that you will turn up both kinds of reference article, the short kind and the more detailed kind. Also in some cases you will not be directed to the specific article, but rather to the homepage of the reference book. Just search the topic you want (it will be on the sidebar to the right) and you will find the article.

E-Reference Collections

ABC-CLIO EBook Collection This link opens in a new window
ABC-CLIO e-Book collection is a collection of reference books on different subjects.

All are also searchable through Summon
Britannica Academic This link opens in a new window
The Encyclopaedia Britannica is the world's most comprehensive reference product, a distinction it has held since its first publication in 1768. The online encyclopedia from Encyclopaedia Britannica has hundreds of thousands of articles, biographies, videos, images, and web sites.
Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works This link opens in a new window
Real transcripts of therapy and counseling sessions and first-person narratives illuminating the experience of mental illness and its treatment. Includes 25,000 pages of major reference works.

Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works is a landmark database that, when complete, will contain more than 2,000 transcripts of actual therapy sessions, 40,000 pages of first-person accounts, and 25,000 pages of major reference works. There will be diaries, letters, autobiographies, oral histories, and personal memoirs along with the full text of the sessions themselves. All accounts are non-fiction, delivered in the first person and, where possible, contemporaneous.

The database opens a world of primary sources for therapists, clients, and students to explore and analyze. New methods of research in fields as diverse as anthropology, linguistics, and English literature are now possible.

Personal accounts by clients and records of their therapy experiences are not widely available, leaving researchers with only periodical articles and textbooks. But the journal and text materials present only case studies, which focus on proving a hypothesis or teaching a particular disorder, rarely offering the candid voice of the client. Counseling and Psychotherapy Transcripts, Client Narratives, and Reference Works fills the gap at last, bringing the value of primary narratives to scholars and practicing therapists alike.
Credo Academic Core This link opens in a new window
Features content from hundreds of reference books in a broad range of subjects.

Credo is a vast online reference library, providing access to the full text of hundreds of highly regarded and popular titles. And Credo brings the facts alive with images, sound files, animations, videos and much more. Find speedy, simple answers and full in-depth articles.
Gale eBooks (formerly GVRL) This link opens in a new window
Collection of searchable e-reference books.
Subject areas include Health, Business, Religion, Philosophy, Social Sciences, History, Art, Film etc.

Collection of searchable e-reference books
Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.

As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from those of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You'll still find these in the OED, but you'll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to films scripts and cookery books.
Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window
Language and subject reference works from one of the world's biggest reference publishers in a single cross-searchable resource.
Psychiatry Online This link opens in a new window
PsychiatryOnline is a web-based portal that features DSM-5® and The American Journal of Psychiatry as well as other psychiatric journals. It also includes a collection of psychiatric textbooks.
SAGE Knowledge Complete Books, Reference and Navigator Collection This link opens in a new window
SAGE Knowledge includes an expansive range of SAGE eBook and eReference content making this the ultimate social sciences digital library for students, researchers, and faculty. This expansive collection includes:
•Scholarly monographs
•Reference works including handbooks and encyclopedias
•Professional development titles
•Textbooks – core and supplementary
•Major works series
Salem Online This link opens in a new window
E-reference collection covering Literature (the Critical Insights series) , History (the Decades Encyclopedias, Great Events from History, Great Lives from History) Health (Infectious Diseases, Magill's Medical Guide 7thed., Psychology and Mental Health) and Science (Forensic Science, Environmental Issues)