Typical questions

• • Can you give me a list of key bodies that represent British social workers?

• • Where can I keep up to date with news from the hospitality industry?

Starting points

• • Professional associations are organisations that represent the interests of their members. Students often find their websites useful for tracing information about careers and qualifications. They frequently contain speciality trade publications with news about events, new developments in the field and commentary on government policy from an industry perspective.

• • This section covers general resources. All the main subject categories also list relevant professional and trade organisations.

Recommended resources

Key organisations

Gale Directory Library (Subscription) [Specialist]

www.cengage.com www.gale.com/intl/databases/gale-directory-library

A number of specialist directories of national, regional and state level associations covering Europe, North America and other areas of the world are available for purchase as single e-books or in a package. All offer searchable lists of contact addresses and details on remit. Users are advised to check date of publication for individual titles.

Trade Association Forum

www.taforum.org

Maintains an authoritative directory of UK trade organisations. Includes non TAF members. Entries give contact details and links to websites.

Key organisations – trade unions

TUC [Basic]

www.tuc.org.uk

National body representing over 40 of Britain's major unions. Note that this does not include all British unions, only those affiliated. The website has helpful advice on the legal rights of workers, plus blogs, social media and reports commenting on UK employment policy from a trade union perspective. They also maintain an excellent trade union history website (www.unionhistory.info) that provides free access to digitised archival materials tracing the fight for workers’ rights in the UK.

Certification Officer

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/certification-officer

Provides a full listing of registered unions with details of their remit and recent annual returns.

For international coverage try these websites. All have news, events listings, policy documents and lists of national/regional members.

European Trade Union Federation

www.etuc.org

International Labour Organization (ILO) [Specialist]

www.ilo.org

United Nations agency responsible for labour standards. Its website provides free access to an extensive digital library of documents dating back to its founding in 1919. It also has a number of specialist databases.