LexisNexis™ Academic Tip Sheet

Access || Searching LexisNexis™ Academic || Phrase Searching || Truncation and Wildcards
Boolean Operators || Specifying Dates || Additional Tips

When and why to use LexisNexis™ Academic:

• Any time you're looking for news or articles that would appear in newspapers or magazines.
• LexisNexis™ contains more than 5,600 sources (including television and radio broadcast transcripts!) and is full-text.
• Coverage is international - keep in mind British spelling variations.
• Articles and citations can be e-mailed anywhere.
• LexisNexis is always worth a try! Contains book reviews, dance, music and theater reviews, obituaries, all kinds of info.

1. Start at library home page: http://library.uarts.edu/
2. Select Research Tools and Resources
3. Select LexisNexis Academic

If you are off-campus, follow the menus above. You will be prompted to enter your name and library barcode number to enter the databases.

If you are on campus, especially for faculty and staff with office computers on the campus network, you can bookmark LexisNexis™ Academic with this link:
http://0-web.lexis-nexis.com.library.uarts.edu:80/universe

Default search mode is QUICK NEWS SEARCH.

• Quick News Search is NOT a full-text search. Searches only headline/lead paragraphs (HLEAD) or subject headings (TERMS).


• Retrieves a maximum of 125 documents


• Quick News is good for very current information - it only goes back for 2 years.

GUIDED NEWS SEARCH

Guided News Search allows you to combine terms and go back further in time.

• You MUST make choices from Step 1 and Step 2 of the Guided News Search interface.


• Boolean operators or "connectors" (and, or, and not) are allowed


• Maximum of 1,000 articles retrieved.

Step 3: Entering Your Search Terms

"university of the arts" or "andy warhol"

! used for unlimited truncation, e.g.,

librar! finds library, libraries, librarian, librariography, etc.

photo! finds photo, photos, photography, photographer, photographers, photographic, etc., but also finds photons, photovoltaic, photosensitive, etc. Think about the best place to truncate.


* used for single-character wildcard of one or more characters, e.g., bernst**n allows up to 2 characters - finds bernstin, bernstein, bernstien, bernstoon, bernsteen, etc., but not bernstegen

wom*n allows up to 1 character - finds womn, woman, women, womyn or womon

Note that regular plurals made by adding s are automatically searched without truncation.

On the left of Step 3 you will see drop boxes containing the Boolean operator options:
and means ALL terms must be SOMEWHERE in each record retrieved
or means ANY or either of the terms must be in each record retrieved
and not ELIMINATES records containing those words
w/5 means those words or phrases must be WITHIN 5 words of each other
w/s means those words or phrases must be WITHIN the same SENTENCE
w/p means those words or phrases must be WITHIN the same PARAGRAPH

On the right of Step 3 are drop boxes that specify what fields of the records are to be searched. Full Text is the broadest.

A simple way to control your search is with date options. NOTE that this is optional - you can just set the drop box to "All available dates". If you want to specify a date, however, you MUST put something in the "From" and the "To" box. You may use a variety of date formats, e.g,


04/23/2003
4/23/03
Apr 22, 2003

If you wanted to specify a single date you would type the exact same date in the From and the To boxes.

• You can improve the relevancy of what you retrieve by using LexisNexis' "SmartIndexing Technology" terms in full-text searches. For example:
  
  

  terms(marketing or branding) and terms(adolescence)	Full Text

  
  For a list of terms, click here. NOTE: do not use words as SmartIndexing words unless you've checked the list. If the word you use is not a SmartIndexing term, your search results will be 0.


• Not finding what you're looking for in LexisNexis? Try a different database such as Artbibliographies Modern, ERIC, International Index to the Performing Arts, WilsonWeb or whichever one sounds appropriate for your search. Descriptions are on the library Web pages. For a complete list of all electronic research tools see our Research Tools and Resources page, and of course you can always ask a librarian for assistance.


• Start any database search simply with just two or three search terms and see if you need to narrow your results from there.
  Remember, the more terms you AND together or the longer your phrases are, the smaller your results will be.


• Even a two-word phrase can reduce your search results tremendously.
  If you retrieve too little, change a 3-word phrase to a 2-word phrase, try ANDing the words instead of using them as a phrase, or try looking for those words in the same sentence or paragraph.


• Don't be shy - ask a librarian or library staff member for assistance.
  Or even better--read the tips and the help in LexisNexis and get empowered.