Research Guides: Master of Social Work Program (UNH Durham): SW 820: Social Welfare Policy I

Biographical Information

American National Biography
Profiles of more than 18,700 deceased men and women -- from all eras and walks of life -- whose lives have shaped the US. Original articles covered people who died prior to 1996 but articles on important figures who have died since 1995 are being added regularly.

Search or browse by name or use Advanced Search (Search tab) to find people by occupation/realm of renown, gender, birth and/or death date, birthplace, and more.

Want to find out more about some of the people involved in social history and policy development? Try some of these online biographcal resources:

Biography in Context
Offers over 600,000 biographies spanning history and geography.Content includes reference material (such as Almanac of Famous People), magazines, audio and video content, images, and links to screened, reliable websites.

Can browse or search by name, occupation, nationality, etc. or by multiple criteria in Advanced Search.

Examples of entries from American National Biography:

Example from Biography in Context:

A very useful source for background information is

CREDO reference - An online reference library that provides access to a selection of reference books including specialized encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, books of quotations, and more, all from reputable publishers.

For example, CREDO includes the Encyclopedia of Ethics, which includes entries on topics such as utilitarianism and libertarianism.

You can see a list of all titles in CREDO reference by broad subject areas such as philosophy, social sciences, history, and general reference.

Some titles in CREDO reference will also have short biographical entries.

Images can enrich your reading of texts. A useful image database is

ARTstor - Digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. Help for ARTstor.

Examples of some images:

While many images in this database are copyrighted, they have all been licensed for eductional (pedagogical and scholarly) use.