This is a short tutorial to help you make the most of Lexis-Nexis. It's a great resource for newspaper and magazine articles about recent events.
You can continue by clicking the "Next" button below.
We will follow my quest to find articles about Trent Reznor written for major papers in the past month. If you're wondering if this is worth a database search, try a Google search, and see what you come up with.
To reach Lexis-Nexis, start at
http://library.cortland.edu.
We will follow my quest to find articles about Trent Reznor written for major papers in the past month. If you're wondering if this is worth a database search, try a Google search, and see what you come up with.
To reach Lexis-Nexis, start at
http://library.cortland.edu.
Now, select the link to "Databases: by Title".
This brings us to a list of the library's databases by title.
You might want to take a look around to see if anything here will be useful. When you're done, click on "L".
Here's "Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe." Click on the link.
Most people stop here, with the "Quick News Search," for their research.
You'll want to do better, though. Let's run a "Guided News Search."
Make sure to follow these steps in order!
First, select your news category. There are a number here that might be of use. We'll take "General News" to search major news sources.
Now, we want to choose a news source from this list.
I'll pick "Major Papers."
That's good, but what if we want to look in particular papers?
In that case, click on the "Source List" link next to the box.
That's a lot of papers! Let's just pick one or two.
I know those two papers are big, so that should do it.
Now, we should click on "Paste to Search." (If you don't want to pick any in particular, click "Return to Search Form.")
The papers selected will appear in this window, under Step Five.
Now, let's enter our search term.
You can also choose whether you want to search by a particular headline, author, or in the article's full text.
Full text should always be your second choice - there's too many articles otherwise! Let's keep it simple.
If you want to search in a particular time period, you can select it from this menu.
I want to find out about a recent event, so "Previous Month" should work.
If you have a particular date or dates, you can search within them by entering them into these windows.
Remember, most newspapers won't report on an event until the next day!
Let's run our search and see what turns up.
Did that seem like work? We got four good stories that are exactly what we wanted.
I ran this same search on Google. I got back 719,000 web pages. Most of those weren't newspapers, and many weren't from the last month. So that work paid off for us.
Lexis-Nexis also provides us with useful information - the publication, date, newspaper section, and number of words.
This information can help you to find the best match - an article that's too long, or that's in the wrong section of the paper, might not help.
The title of that third one looks good.
I'll take a closer look.
That looks good. Now, what should I do with it?
I could click on the "Print" button for a version formatted for printing, but I want to save paper.
Email sounds good.
I'll enter my email address, and a note so I don't delete it accidentally.
Hey, it happens.
Yeah, that looks good. I can "Return to Full" to go back to the article, and use the other tabs to look at my results... or I could call it a day.
Try a few searches of your own. Don't forget to ask a librarian if you need help. I mean, a different librarian. I'm outta here.
Legal stuff:
Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.