Electronic Reference Resources
The following e-reference resources are useful for getting reader-friendly, background information on topics of interest.
Background info gives you context and key terms associated with your topic making it easier to search for scholarly materials.
These resources can also help you with finding topic ideas or narrowing your topic.
If looking at the history of policy - these resources help you come up with terminology of the era, as well as important people, events, and policies/legislation relating to your topic during that period. These terms can then help in your search for materials to use.
CQ Researcher via CQ Press
Once CQ Press opens click on CQ Researcher. Browse by topic or conduct a search for a broad term. The results should give you related issues to consider focusing your research on, and you can link to reports on these issues that include overviews, outlook, chronology, maps/graphs, etc. Comprehensive, unbiased reporting and analysis of issues in America since 1923.
Encyclopedia of Social Work (NASW & Oxford University Press 2008 ebook)
TRIAL of Encyclopedia of Social Work Online continuously updated (access through Nov. 12, 2024)
Gale eBooks (Browse the History, Multicultural, & Social Science titles including:)
Sage Reference (Browse by subject, find such titles as:)
Print Reference Resources
These may be in reference or in the staacks.
For multi-volume works, start by looking for your topic in the index (usually found in the back of the last volume.)
Asian American History and Culture by 
Colonial America: an encyclopedia of social, political, cultural, and economic history by 
Encyclopedia of American Disability History by 
Encyclopedia of the Great Depression and the New Deal by 
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States by 