Social Work Field Placement Guide

CINAHL®Complete is the world’s most comprehensive source of full-text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 1,300 journals indexed in CINAHL. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo. CINAHL®Complete is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing & allied health literature.

Emcare (a product extension of EMBASE) covers all nursing specialties and nursing healthcare professions. Emcare includes international coverage of allied health, education and training, development and management, midwifery, health and healthcare economics, clinical medical and healthcare social work, psychiatry and mental health, and traumatology, emergency and critical-care medicine. Emcare includes unique content not found in other nursing and allied health databases and features more than a thousand journals not covered by the Embase database.

ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health SourceTM provides users with reliable healthcare information covering nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine, and much more. Provides access to over 650 leading full-text journals in nursing and allied health.

The Medline database contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts for articles from over 4,300 current biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries.

BioMed Central publishes 287 peer-reviewed open access journals.

Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) is a biomedical and pharmacological database produced by Elsevier B.V., containing more than 30 million records including articles from more than 8,500 journals published world-wide. It contains bibliographic records with citations, abstracts and indexing derived from biomedical articles in peer reviewed journals, and is especially strong in its coverage of drug and pharmaceutical research, pharmacology and toxicology.

Combines eight of the most trusted Evidence Based Medicine Review resources into one. Includes Cochrane Library (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Clinical Answers, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Methodology Register), ACP Journal Club, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Health Technology Assessment, and NHS Economic Evaluation Database. NOTE: To search the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2005 to present) specifically select if from the drop-down menu after clicking on the link above.

AccessMedicine from McGraw-Hill Medical is a comprehensive online medical resource that provides a complete spectrum of knowledge from the best minds in medicine, with essential information accessible anywhere. AccessMedicine provides medical students with a variety of resources needed to excel in basic science studies and clerkships; helps residents, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants with instant access to videos, self-assessment, and leading medical textbooks that facilitate decision-making at the point-of-care; and allows practicing physicians to brush up on their medical knowledge to ensure the best patient outcome.

Healthstar is an online database providing access to the published literature of health services, technology, administration, and research. It is produced cooperatively by the National Library of Medicine and the American Hospital Association.

This database contains over 120,000 references with abstracts to journal articles from over 550 international English language journals, books, and grey literature relating to pregnancy, labor, birth, postnatal care, and neonatal care and the first year of an infant’s life. The database also includes correspondence and commentary written in response to an article. Former name of database: Midwifery and infant care.

Toronto Metropolitan has full access to the CPS. This provides the most current, evidence-based therapeutic information and non-prescription therapy for most common conditions, with cross-referenced drug tables and algorithms. Includes CPS Drug Information, critical updates such as warnings, advisories, and drug shortages; and useful tools such as medical calculators, Clin-Info, Pill Identifier and Lexi-Interact drug interaction checker.

As part of Toronto Metropolitan University’ subscription to CPS Full Access, you can download the CPS app, click on the Mobile App icon above.

Previously called eTherapeutics+ e-CPS

UptoDate offers point-of-care clinical resource and decision-making tool containing medical and patient information, drug handbooks, and medical calculators. Click here for login instructions.

AgeLine focuses exclusively on the population aged 50+ and issues of aging. AgeLine is the premier source for the literature of social gerontology and includes aging-related content from the health sciences, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, and public policy. AgeLine also includes information for professionals working in aging-related fields and for consumers. Original abstracts are generated for every citation, with index terms drawn from AgeLine's Thesaurus of Aging Terminology. AgeLine indexes over 200 journals, books, book chapters, and reports. Designed for researchers, professionals, students, and general consumers, this database addresses aging issues from individual, national, and global perspectives.

Health Systems Evidence is a continuously updated repository of syntheses of research evidence about governance, financial and delivery arrangements within health systems, and about implementation strategies that can support change in health systems.

Formerly known as The Registry of Nursing Research and Practice Innovations (RNR), the Sigma Repository is a free gray literature database provided by Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. All records in the RNR have been submitted by nurse researchers and cover completed research, ongoing studies, conference presentations and dissertations.

Research data includes abstracts, citations, research methods, funding, domain, study variables and scientific results. Anyone conducting research in the area of nursing can submit information to the database.

Provides ready access to information on measurement instruments (i.e., questionnaires, interview schedules, checklists, index measures, coding schemes/manuals, rating scales, projective techniques, vignettes/scenarios, tests) in the health fields, psychosocial sciences, organizational behavior, and library and information science.

AccessMedicine from McGraw-Hill Medical is a comprehensive online medical resource that provides a complete spectrum of knowledge from the best minds in medicine, with essential information accessible anywhere. AccessMedicine provides medical students with a variety of resources needed to excel in basic science studies and clerkships; helps residents, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants with instant access to videos, self-assessment, and leading medical textbooks that facilitate decision-making at the point-of-care; and allows practicing physicians to brush up on their medical knowledge to ensure the best patient outcome.

PsycINFO provides access to international literature in psychology and related disciplines. Unrivaled in its depth of psychological coverage and respected worldwide for its high quality, the database is enriched with literature from an array of disciplines related to psychology such as psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work. Nearly all records contain nonevaluative summaries, and all records from 1967 to the present are indexed using the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is the US national bibliographic database of education literature. Sponsored by the US Department of Education, ERIC consists of two files: Resources in Education, covering the document literature, and Current Index to Journals in Education, covering published journal literature.

As of April 24, 2025, the Department of Education is significantly scaling back activities associated with maintaining ERIC, with a 45% reduction in items in their collection, due to budget cuts imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency. If you have questions or concerns about how to use ERIC effectively given this information, please reach out to your subject librarian.

The database also contains full text of the ERIC document collection, which includes a wide variety of resources such as teaching guides, research reports and issue papers. Most of these records are available electronically and can be viewed in PDF format from links within ERIC (requires Adobe Acrobat viewer). In cases where the indexed content is not open access, users will need to use OMNI to access the full text.

Social Work Abstracts offers extensive coverage of more than 450 social work and human services journals dating back to 1977. Produced by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the database provides citations and abstracts dealing with all aspects of the social work field, including theory and practice, areas of service and social issues and problems. Contains scholarly and professional perspectives on subjects such as therapy, education, human services, addictions, child and family welfare, mental health, civil and legal rights, economics.
Maximum 4 simultaneous users

Social Services Abstracts provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. The database abstracts and indexes over 1,300+ serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, and citations to book reviews. Social Services Abstracts is published by Sociological Abstracts, a division of Cambridge Scientific Abstracts.

Sociological Abstracts is the fundamental tool for access to the latest international findings in theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and political science. Produced by Sociological Abstracts, Inc., the database contains abstracts from 1,809 journals published since 1963 and enhanced bibliographic citations for dissertations added since 1986. Sociological Abstracts references journal articles, dissertations, book abstracts, chapter abstracts, and association paper abstracts as well as citations from books, films, and software.

Disability in the Modern World includes primary sources, supporting materials, and archives, along with video. The content covers "not only in the growing disciplines of disability history and disability studies, but also in history, media, the arts, political science, education, and other areas where the contributions of the disability community are typically overlooked."

LGBTQ+ Source contains all of the content available in LGBT Life as well as full text for more than 140 of the most important and historically significant LGBTQ+ journals, magazines and regional newspapers, plus full text for 150 monographs/books. The database includes comprehensive indexing and abstract coverage as well as a specialized LGBTQ+ Thesaurus containing over 10,000 terms.

The Elsevier ScienceDirect Journals collection consists of over 1700 full text electronic journals covering topics in the physical sciences, applied sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and business and economics. The ScienceDirect platform also hosts and makes accessible other large ejournal collections, reference works, indexes and web search engines. These include: full text ejournals from Academic Press, Elsevier Science, Harcourt Health full text access to International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Medline and the science specific web search engine Scirus. Full text access is available for most titles from 1995 to present.

Scopus offers access to more that 14,000 scholarly titles including approximately 750 conference proceedings, all journals in Medline, 400 trade publications and also approximately 500 Open Access Journals. In development for more than two years with the collaborative efforts of 300 librarians and researchers, Scopus covers the content of over 4,000 international scientific, technical, medical and social science publishers.
For information on Scopus APIs, go Elsevier website

Web of Science is the online version of the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Users can search 8,500 international research journals in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. The Web of Science also provides cited reference searching

PQDT Global offers access to the full range of ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text content plus additional international content (over 1.5 million PHD dissertations in overall). It also includes PQDT - UK & Ireland, which grants access to over 500,000 abstracts from UK & Irish PhD theses (the content from our PQDT - UK & Ireland database).

This database, with 600 full text titles, is the most comprehensive Canadian reference collection available today. Accessible to readers and researchers at every level, CBCA Complete features a highly-respected, diversified mix of publications, including scholarly journals, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and magazines.

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.