Bryan Glastonbury
is a Research Professor at the Centre for Human Service Technology.
Contact him at:
CHST,
School of Social Sciences,
University of Southampton,
Southampton. SO17 1BJ
UK
Available from:
NASW Press,
POB 431,
Annapolis JCY,
MD 20701,
USA.
This CD-ROM is a data set based on three published
US reference works (1995 editions):
Encyclopedia of Social Work (19th
Edition - Editor-in-Chief Richard L. Edwards)
The Social
Work Dictionary (3rd
Edition - Robert L Barker)
Social Work Almanac (2nd
Edition - Leon Ginsderg)
The data set is stated as containing the equivalent
of 4,000 printed pages, and operates in the context of a search engine
called Folio VIEWS 3.1.
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The Social Work Reference Library
Reviewed by Bryan
Glastonbury
Platform and technical details
The CD is designed
to run on a Macintosh or a PC with Windows (though it can be made to function
on DOS). The review was carried out using Windows 3.1. Price is $275 for
a single user version, plus 10% postage and handling. A short manual is
included, along with a Quick Reference Card. It is adequate rather than
comprehensive, but there is on-line help as well.
The program loads easily from CD,
and can be installed wholly on the PC’s hard disk, or run partly
from the CD. The look and feel is typical of a Windows 3 package, with
a top line of pull-down menus and a ‘Toolbelt’ of user-selectable
click-on icons down the left of the screen. The contents can be scrolled
through as a single very long document, including a facility to block,
copy and paste script to a number of word processors, but the intention
is that the user should employ the search engine to interrogate the data
set. The core of this is a key word search, handled in the usual way by
typing in words or phrases with Boolean operators. A range of additional
facilities are available, such as establishing hypertext links, tagging,
highlighting, creating subsets (search groups), and others, all functioning
through the click-on icons. Overall these processes work smoothly and
quickly, and anyone with reasonable familiarity with the Windows 3 environment
will have no difficulty becoming a proficient user in a relatively short
time.
Content
The
content covers three broad areas - bibliography, dictionary and facts
/ figures about major social issues and provisions. These reflect the
core aims of the three reference works which make up the package. However,
the material can be used in various alternative ways, for example to access
biographies of key figures in social work and social policy, scan essays
on important topics, or find the full name of acronyms. Inevitably the
focus of the content is on the USA, but there is a significant and useful
amount of comparative material. Searching on ‘Britain’, for
example, offers 58 entries, and takes the user into some informative overviews
of North American and European social work developments. For a general
user the historical perspective is also valuable, both in the review articles
and the biographies, with a substantial coverage of social policy as well
as social work / services.
Coverage of information technology is primarily through
two substantial papers. William H. Butterfield offers a review of computer
use in US social services agencies, ranging over the full span of professional,
administrative and managerial applications, as well as offering an extensive
US bibliography. Dick Schoech has a paper on information systems which
is thinner on the bibliographic side, but stronger on the theoretical
and international dimensions. Both provide excellent overviews of developments.
Given that this CD-ROM sets out to be a US resource
it is pleasantly wide-ranging in its appeal, and certainly has valuable
contents for the European user. The search engine makes it easy to access,
and offers real added value to the printed versions of the three reference
works. For the individual purchaser it is expensive, but as a resource
for a social work or social policy course it should be highly effective,
and definitely worth ensuring student access.
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