How to use this site

What Can I Find Here?

The Social Welfare History Project (SWHP) provides historical documents, biographical profiles, and scholarly essays on social welfare history in the United States. Whether you’re a student, researcher, educator, or interested in social reform, this guide will help you maximize the site’s resources.

Exploring Topics

The SWHP covers a broad range of topics related to social welfare history. Use the drop-down menu at the top to browse by organizations, programs, eras, issues, or recollections.

Finding Biographical Profiles

Biographical profiles are found under the heading “People.” These profiles detail the contributions of key figures who worked to help others and bring about societal change, including social workers, reformers, educators, nurses, and bureaucrats.

Using the Search Function

The Search bar (at upper right) performs a simple text search, looking for words that match the keywords you’ve entered. To search effectively, we suggest:

—Use 1-3 words. Quotation marks are permitted. Examples: temperance, Boston, deaf; “group work” “Survey Graphic” “Jim Crow”
—Focus on the most unique words related to your topic
—Remember that language changes over time. Historical items and primary sources may often be found by searching on historical terminology, some of which is offensive to us today.

Accessing Historical Documents and Transcriptions

The SWHP features historical documents that provide firsthand perspectives on social welfare movements and community response to these activities. To access these materials, search on a topic or person, then

—Look for dates in article titles, such as Hot Lunches for a Million School Children (1937). Recognize when the writer’s perspective comes from another era
—Look for a “Source” given either at the beginning or the end of an article. This will indicate where and when the text was first published. See for example “Black Richmond” originally published in Survey Graphic in 1934
—Follow links to digital collections at VCU Libraries, The Library of Congress, The Internet Archive, The Social Welfare History Archives, and many other sites