Background Information
Databases
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window
Provides reporting and analysis on issues in the news, including coverage relating to health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, and the economy.
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Films on Demand is a digital video streaming service that offers access to educational videos from a variety of producers including A & E, PBS, the BBC, National Geographic, HBO Documentary Films, Films for the Humanities & Sciences, and more.
- Ethnic Newswatch This link opens in a new window
Full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press. It also contains Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, which provides historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals from 1959-1989.
Reference Books on Poverty Issues
Background information on poverty topics.
The working poor : invisible in AmericaCall Number: HC110.P6; S48 2004 - 3rd floorISBN: 1595581766An intimate portrait of poverty-level working families from a range of ethnic backgrounds in America reveals their legacy of low-paying, dead-end jobs, dysfunctional parenting, and substance abuse and charges the government with failing to provide adequate housing, health care, and education.
Nickel and dimed : on (not) getting by in AmericaCall Number: HD4918; .E375 2001 - 3rd FloorISBN: 0805088385Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered as a woefully inexperienced homemaker returning to the workforce.
A framework for understanding povertyCall Number: HV4045; .P39 2003 - 3rd FloorISBN: 1929229488People in poverty face challenges virtually unknown to those in middle class or wealth--challenges from both obvious and hidden sources. The reality of being poor brings out a survival mentality, and turns attention away from opportunities taken for granted by everyone else. If you work with people from poverty, some understanding of how different their world is from yours will be invaluable. This breakthrough book gives you practical, real-world support and guidance to improve your effectiveness in working with people from all socioeconomic backgrounds.