SWK 140: Introduction to Social Work

Social Work / Sociology Databases

Other Social Science Databases

General Topic Database

Health/Mental Health Databases

oogle Scholar

Google Scholar Search

Google Scholar searches scholarly literature online. Rather than indexing web sites, the engine indexes articles, article and book citations, and theses.

Google Scholar has some advantages:

  • It's free to search.
  • It's accessible anywhere.
  • The "cited by" feature allows you to see what other articles have cited a particular piece of research.
  • The tool has nice limiting and refining options.
  • Articles you have access to through DeWitt are noted.

There are also disadvantages:

  • Not all of the results are free and accessible; many of them require payment or access to a database.
  • It does not index everything; many of our databases index more or better research.
  • There is no definition of what "scholarly" is; not all of the research you find may fit your professor's definition of scholarly.