Dr. Gary Holden, a professor at New York University's Silver School of Social Work has updated his website, entitled "Information for Practice" (IP). This free website is a clearinghouse of sorts - and has been running for a number of years. The stated goal of this website is "to help social service professionals throughout the world conveniently maintain an awareness of news regarding the profession and emerging scholarship."
Why you want to look at IP: In addition to a newsreel related to social work-related news, IP tracks the "grey literature," funding opportunities, calls for papers, meta-analyses and systematic reviews and more. I have found this to be a good website to share with graduating students who will not have access to online databases once in the field. A good way to stay connected to the research - and stems the tide of the research-to-practice gap.
Updates to the IP website: Dr. Holden has recently re-designed and updated the site and I, for one, find it very refreshing and easy to manage. The following is a summary (from Dr. Holden) of the changes to the site:
- A new search engine is currently being beta tested which allows you greater control.
- The site has been reconfigured and expanded. There are now 10 categories of information: news; guidelines plus; meta-analyses & systematic reviews; funding; images in the news; video; books; grey literature; open access journals; and calls.
Caveats from Dr. Holden: "As before, IP is free to you (although a few categories may not get you to
the final full text material (e.g., books)), it is updated 24 hrs per day, 7 days per week, (and almost) 365 days per year. IP: isn't optimal about anything; you wouldn't base a research synthesis on it; and it isn't exclusive enough that you don't see things that you are not interested in. Yet, it is a current slice of the social care/social welfare/social work field that I don't think you get anywhere else. My goal is to provide a
place where any social care/social welfare/social work student or professional can visit, anytime, and have a quick sense of what is happening in these related fields. Browsing/searching the archives allows one to
extend that view backward in time."
IP is sponsored by the New York University School of Social Work; the Division of Social Work and Behavioral Science, Mount Sinai School of Medicine; the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research, and the Society for Social Work and Research.
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