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Social Work: Social Welfare & Policy

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National Policy

A guide to finding current public policy, policy analysis and background information for policy makers.

Discover Policy

  • Don't forget your class readings!
  • Search the web with Advanced Google Search
    • "example search terms" site:.gov

Overview Information

  • CQ Almanac - offers original narrative accounts of every major piece of legislation that lawmakers considered during a congressional session. 1945-2020.
  • CQ Magazine - offers current reporting on major pieces of legislation that lawmakers considered. Comes out every two weeks. 1983-current.
  • Congressional Research Service - The reports are prepared by the Library of Congress for members of Congress on policy contemporaneous to the issues facing the legislature.

Historical Documentation

  • Congress.gov - Use the Legislation link to explore legislation back to 1973 in both the House and Senate.
  • ProQuest Congressional - Robust source for Legislative Histories from 1969-present. Also includes important congressional documents back 1789.
  • Hein Online - Includes the Congressional Record back to 1789, among other historical documents. Browse by Category, U.S. - Federal at the top.
  • HathiTrust - A digital repository of government documents that range from bills, laws, hearings to commissioned reports on contemporaneous issues.
  • Proquest Historical Newspapers - The databases includes current and historical news stories from the major publications. Search across the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, LA Times and more.

Statistics

Acknowledgement

We sincerely thank Ms. Lori Siegel, Brown School Librarian, at Washington University in St. Louis for sharing her Social Policy research guide, from which we heavily borrowed content for this guide.