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Library Session Goals | Advocacy | Social Policy, Regulation, and Legislation | Statistics and Data | News and Journal Articles | Books and Journals | Citing Sources | Research Assistance
Social Work 584: Examines approaches for analyzing social policy development, implementation and advocacy in the United States; and development of skills to become effective policy practitioners. Involves ability to formulate viable policy options as well as skills in advocating for adoption of desired policies. Content includes knowledge about the political processes associated with policy development, the technologies needed to develop policies, communication skills need for policy advocacy, and knowledge in a specialized area. Course builds on policy material presented in SOCW 410.
1. Identify sources about social policy, advocacy, and legislation.
2. Understand how to structure a search for information about a specific policy, regulation, or legislation.
3. Find news and journal articles about recent policy and legislation changes.
4. Learn about citation management tools (Refworks).
322.43 Ad969
Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action
Outlines an agenda for advocacy actors and includes advocacy tactics and strategies. Focuses on NGO advocacy organizations.
Council on Social Work Education: Public Policy Initiative
CSWE strives to promote the value of social work education on the national stage.
The Handbook of Community Practice
Discusses community development, organizing, planning, and social change.
National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Advocacy
Includes information the Social Work Reinvestment Act (Initiative) and links to legislative alerts, updates and issues.
Regulations.gov
Submit comments on proposed regulations and related documents published by the U.S. Federal government.
361.320973 Sch58s
Social Work Advocacy
Discusses the history of social work advocacy, defines advocacy, and provides a general practice framework for advocacy. Places social work advocacy into contexts including client, cause, legislative, and administrative.
Congress.gov Legislative Glossary
Brief explanations of legislative terms used throughout Congress.gov.
Legislative Glossary
From the National Association of Social Workers. Brief definitions for key terms about legislation.
THOMAS: The Legislative Process
From The Library of Congress. Overview of how laws are made. Includes a congressional glossary.
361.610973 H1912009
The Handbook of Social Policy. 2nd ed.
Overview of the "state of the field" of social policy and discusses the past, current and future directions.
Introduction to Government Information (from University of Illinois Library Government Information Services)
What is government information and how can I use it?
Code of Federal Regulations (FDsys)
Official version of the Code of Federal Regulations. Updates are done at regularly scheduled intervals. It also covers regulations as they appeared in prior years back to 1996.
CQ Press Public Affairs Collections
Provides a multitude of information about public policy matters including links to statistics, bibliographies, images, legislative analysis, encyclopedias, primary sources and more.
FDSys
Includes a broad range of U.S. government information. GPO Access includes the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, which is a searchable index of government information in print as well as electronic format.
Federal Register
Official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of federal agencies and organizations and executive orders.
FindLaw
Access to the United States Code, the compilation of public laws currently in effect.
ProQuest Congressional (Congressional Universe)
Full text of pending legislation, U.S. laws, testimony before Congress and other Congressional documents. Includes an unofficial, but useful version of the Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Register from 1980 to the present.
THOMAS
Legislative information from the Library of Congress. Bills, public laws and legislation, complete government information, library of historical documents; committee information, text of Congressional Record. Generally provides information from 1990, with some records available back to 1978.
For more information about legislation, see the Legislative, Regulatory, and Judicial Law Resources.
Illinois General Assembly
Search for bills, public acts, and statutes. Includes legislative glossary.
LexisNexis State Capital
Check the status of a bill, search state statutes, find summaries of regulations, and search publications about issues affecting states.
For more information about Illinois resources, see the State of Illinois Government Sources.
U.S. Census Bureau
The Census Bureau is for anyone looking for statistics on social, demographic or economic data on a national, state or local level. Information is available from a variety of sources, including the decennial censuses from 1990 to 2010, the American Community Survey, and the Economic Census.
FactFinder
The go-to source for demographic information about the United States. It’s possible to browse or search for statistics by topic, geography, race and ethnic groups, or industry codes.
Bureau of Justice Statistics
The Bureau of Justice Statistics is the primary source for the collection, analysis and dissemination of statistics on crime and justice in the United States. This site provides links to reports, data, and a wide variety of publications including Age Patterns of Victims of Serious Violent Crimes; Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics; and the World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems.
ProQuest Statistical Insight
ProQuest Statistical Insight includes all statistical publications issued by the U.S. government back to 1973 through CIS' American Statistics Index, and 1,000 statistical publications of private and state government sources from 1980 forward through CIS' Statistical Reference Index. It also provides database access to the American Statistics Index, the Statistics Reference Index, and the International Index of Statistics.
For additional sources of statistics, see the Sources of Statistics in Social Sciences, Health, and Education and Government Statistics and Numeric Data.
Illinois State & County Quick Facts (US Census)
Quick overview of population data as well as business and geography. Can view information by county and city.
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services
Includes Child Abuse and Neglect Statistical Report and Executive Statistical Summary Report.
Illinois Department of Public Health: Health Statistics
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) collects and evaluates of health statistics to measure progress toward state and national health objectives. These numbers also provide the basis for developing and implementing public health strategies.
For more Illinois statistics, see the Illinois Statistics by Subject.
News articles provide up-to-date information about a topic and may include statistics, photographs and editorial coverage. Newspapers provide localized information and includes quotes from experts, government officials, and witnesses. However, authors are usually not experts about a topic.
University of Illinois Library Newspaper Database
Find newspapers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in all formats including print, microfilm, and online.
LexisNexis Academic Universe
Comprehensive collection of major world newspapers. Under "Source Type," select newspaper or entire a specific newspaper's name in the by "Source Title" box. For more options, such as searching by date or subject, use the Advanced Search or News search option on the left menu.
Scholarly journal articles are one of the primary means of communicating research ideas. They are an important component of academic research and give you some insight into ongoing debates and scholarly conversations about your topic. You can find articles through database searches. Three key databases with articles about social policy can be searched together in the ProQuest interface. To do so: click on any of the links below, then click on the small triangle beside "Searching: 1 database" in the upper left of the screen. Next, select the databases of interest.
Library catalogs are used for two purposes. First, if you know exactly what you are looking for, for example you know the exact title or an author's name. This works for book titles and journal titles. Second, you can use library catalogs to discover material that might be helpful to you by doing subject and keyword searching.
Books can be useful to find detailed information, including the history, about a specific topic. For example, the book Same-Sex Marriage in the United States: focus on the facts (306.8480973 C119s) discusses landmark decisions, legislative efforts, and historical precedents.
Guidelines for citing electronic and print resources are available from the Reference Library's Cite a Source page and the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library's Style and Writing Guide.
A great tool for writing papers, RefWorks helps you export bibliographic records from databases, change the citation styles as needed, and import the citation directly into a Word document so you can create bibliographies on the fly.
Use the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library's Ask-A-Librarian service to contact a librarian via Instant Messenger/chat, email, phone, or in person.
Contact a librarian to request an appointment for an in-depth Research Consultation.
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Last modified by: Paige Cunningham on 4/22/13