LexisNexis Workshop

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Lexis/Nexis Workshop

• June 2008

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Outline

• Overview of contents/organization
• Overview of search basics
• Learn by doing

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What is Lexis/Nexis?

• Lexis Legal information sources
• Nexis News information sources
• Newspapers, business and trade magazines
• Company news, financials, directories,
  biographical sources.

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Where When can you use it?

• Vanier and Webster Libraries
• Reference Desk Hours

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Conditions of Use

• Concordia students faculty
• Course-related projects only
• Commercial use strictly prohibited
• Some files inaccessible

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Not one database, but many!

• You cannot search all of Lexis/Nexis at once
• Sources are organized into files and group files
• You must choose which files or group files to
  search

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Files Group and Individual

• Individual file
• One information source or publication in a
  file by itself ( NYT New York times)
• Combined file
• - Several information sources or
  publications in one file
• (eg. Non US news news non-U.S. sources)

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How are files organized?

• Alphabetically by title
• Harvard Business Review, New York Times,
  Gale Biographies
• Alphabetically by topic
• News, Company Financial, Reference

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When you begin

• Identify key words and major concepts of your
  topic
• Use the most specific terms to describe your
  topic
• Think of what terms would be in the most ideal
  article you could find.

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For example..

• Civil rights of women in Indonesia

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Keywords for each concept
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Combine keywords Boolean operators

• AND
• Both terms must appear
• OR
• Either term must appear
• AND NOT
• Term must not appear

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Combine your concepts

• (civil rights or human rights or civil liberty)
  and (womn or females or girls) and (Indonesia or
  Indonesian or Jakarta)

Civil Rights
Women
Indonesia
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Problems with AND

• Only requires that both terms appear anywhere in
  the same article
• Relationship between the terms may not be
  relevant, especially in full-text files
• AND sometimes delivers results that are too
  broad
• Proximity operators will help to narrow down your
  search

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Proximity Operators

• Establish a relationship between your terms
• Particularly useful in a full-text database
• W/n words may be in any order but
• within n words of each
  other
• Eg market w/7 share
• john w/2 doe

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Proximity Operators

• w/s words must be within the same
• sentence
• e.g. frequent flyer w/s mile
• w/p words must be within the same
• paragraph
• e.g. retire! W/p benefit

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Proximity Operators

• You can combine w/n, w/s, w/p directly with and,
  and not, or.
• eg. retire! w/s benfit or plan!

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Order of operations

• Parenthesis give you control over the order of
  operations.
• Order of operations in Lexis/Nexis is
• First or
• w/n
• pre/n
• w/s
• w/p
• w/seg
• Last and

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For example

• mary w/2 smith or jane W/2 jones or william w/2
  matthews
• Vs
• (mary w/2 smith) or (jane w/2 jones) or (willliam
  w/2 matthews)

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Segments

• Every document in Lexis/Nexis is divided into
  segments (eg. title, lead, subject, company name
  etc. )
• You can search through all segments
• You can restrict your search to specific segments
• Segments available vary with the file.

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Searching all segments

• Broadest way to search
• Many false hits
• Not recommended in full-text databases

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Segment searching

• Limits the results to those records with terms in
  specific segments
• More specific, relevant results
• Greater control over your results

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Segment Searching

• hlead(family leave)
• company(dupont)
• hlead(family leave) and company(dupont)

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Search tips plurals

• Plural forms are automatically searched
• civil liberty will find civil liberties
• girl will find girls
• But..
• woman will not find women
• child will not find children

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Search tips wildcard

• a wildcard
• e.g womn women or woman
  
• child children but not
  childs,

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Search tips truncation

• ! finds any words that begin with the
  word root
• e.g. child! children, childhood,
• childbearing, childs

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Search tip plurals

• singular (aid) will only find the singular
• plural (aids) will only find the plural
• e.g. plural(aids) and treatment

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Search tip Punctuation

• Punctuation is treated as a space
• take-over will only find take over
• takeover or take over
• to find words which include punctuation or
  operators use quotes, e.g. att

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Search tips capitalization

• All variations of capitalization are searched,
  unless you request otherwise!
• caps(gap) Finds references to the
  the store Gap (vs gap)
• allcaps (caw) Finds references to the CAW,
  
• Canadian
  Autoworkers Union
• nocaps (gap) Finds references to gap not
• Gap

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Search tip Frequency searching

• atleastn(keyword)
• e.g. atleast10(canadian) and television

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Narrowing your search

• Adjust truncation eg. child instead of child!
• Consider proximity operators
• Use segment searching, eg in lead, in title, in
  subject
• Consider additional keywords
• Use available limits such as date
• Be careful how you combine files

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Narrowing your search

• Try the FOCUS feature
• Allows you to search for terms within your search
  results

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Broaden your search

• Consider additional synonyms adjust truncation
• Pare down your search to the essential concepts
• e.g. human rights and civil liberties and
  women
• vs
• (human rights or civil liberties) and women
• Consider broadening your terms
• e.g. (indonesia or south east asia)
• Review the segments you are searching in
• Try a broader concept eg mass media instead of
  television

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Netname login

• Login or-instr
• Password uHDi51Js