Social Work

You can use the BU Libraries Search box to look for print and electronic resources available through the Boston University Libraries. These resources include print books and journals available in the library stacks, as well as e-books and full-text journal articles.

Want support getting started with your search? Check out our searching the library tutorial page.

We search BU LIbraries by using keywords.

To learn more about keywords visit this tutorial. Once we have a list of some of the keywords we want to use to find our results, visit BU Libraries Search. Type the keywords you've chosen in the search box, and then press the magnifying glass to access our results.

When we use BU Libraries Search and press search, our results will show up with a column on the right side.

Here we have a research question thinking about "How do happiness levels impact older adults?". Our keywords are happiness, older, and adults. We have typed this in our search box. On the right side, you will see a column of filters. In the photo below, an arrow is pointing to the column of filters.

Filters allow us to narrow our results. Some of the filters we have available are:

Availability: Limit your result by how you engage (on the shelf in the library or just online)

Peer Review: Indicates the item has gone through a review process by one or more people who in the field.

Open Access: Indicates the content is published without cost or permission barriers.

Material Type: Do you want all results? Only books? Just articles? You can select the type of result you want.

Publication Date: You can select the time period of publication. Do you want only resources from the last 5 years? Or only from 1950?

Language: We have resources in multiple languages. If you are doing research across languages, you can apply this filter. 

and more!

You can use the BU Libraries Search box to connect to information across databases that you have access to. You can limit your materials to just those that are peer-reviewed or just those that are available online. Select what is most relevant to you to refine your search using the buttons on the righthand side:

You can filter your results based on date of publication. This is helpful if you want to just analyze articles from specific years. Using the "Publication Date" facet allows you to do that:

On the right-hand side, you can then edit the years you want.

Here, we are changing to 2014 if we just want articles from the last 10 years:

Then, press update! All your results will be from 2014 to 2024.