SWK 530: Bridging Course in Social Welfare Policy

For interpretation, historical background, and implementation effects of a policy, you need to find secondary sources of information.  The best analysis usually comes from materials written by scholars, or experts, and published either through a editorial review process, such as books published by academic publishers, or a peer-review process, used by many scholarly journals.

LibrarySearch!

You can search for both books and articles in LibrarySearch, and there are filters, such as peer review for articles, that you can use.  Take a look at our LibrarySearch tutorial to get acquainted with this new system!

Databases you may want to search separately:

Google Scholar may also be a possibility, but use it very carefully.  We lose the ability to have edited, verified collections with this product.  To get the most full text, go to the Menu bar in the upper left, click on Settings, then click on Library Links. Choose University of Maine - Full Text and then Save.

In addition to finding scholarly information sources, you will also need to find some government information sources. Government information includes actual laws, case decisions, and regulations, as well as reports (i.e. from Congressional committees, or federal or state agencies) and information designed to inform the public about policy changes and implementation (usually from federal or state agencies).

There are different search strategies for this type of information, depending on what you want to find.  In this guide, there is a separate box focusing on tools for locating federal policies.  And some govenment reports may be identified using the PAIS database. But here are some other resources that might be useful:

• Google - search by adding "site:.gov" to locate items published by the federal government, or "site:maine.gov" for Maine government

These are sites that can assist in finding the actual policy, which is your primary source:

Finding News: