Skyline College Library

Using Lexis-Nexis

[For an explanation of what is Lexis-Nexis, click here.]

1. At a Skyline Library computer, link to http://www.lexis.com/research.

2. Ask a librarian to enter the ID number and password.

3. Select a "Source." (A Source in Lexis-Nexis is a particular database within which you can search for records. Some Sources are "combined", which means they are a larger source made up of set of other sources.)

To select a source, be sure that the "Search" & "Sources" tabs--near the top of the LexisNexis page--are selected.
Under "Look for a Source", click on a tab for the type of source--"Legal", "News & Business" or "Public Records", or click on "Find a Source" to search for a source by name.
(Suggestion: For researching news-related topics, select the "News & Business" tab.)
You will then see the sources for that category.

4. Select a Source by clicking on the name of the source.

(Suggestion: Select "News, Most Recent Two Years" or "News, All".)
To see a description of a file, including the periodicals list and a "segments" (fields) list, click on the icon to right of the file name.

[If you get lost at any time, you can select a new source (database) by clicking on the Sources tab (near the top of the LexisNexis page).]

5. You are now at the search screen.

[Be sure the "Terms and Connectors" button, directly under the "Enter Search Terms" title is selected. If the "Natural Language" button is selected, click on the "Terms and Connectors" button to switch search modes.]

Click in the search entry box and type in search terms for your research question. Use nesting (parentheses around each concept) to search for multiple concepts. Remember that Lexis/Nexis is a large full-text database. You should therefore use proximity operators (W/n is the most common) instead of ANDs, and/or search by field (called "segment" in Lexis/Nexis) if possible. See "Search Features" below.

Search example (for the research question: "How is cigarette advertising targetted at girls or women?"):

hlead ((cigarettes or tobacco or smoking) w/10 (advertis! or billboards or marketing) w/10 (wom*n or girls))

[This example will search in the headline or lead paragraph of all articles or documents in the selected file for the words cigarettes or tobacco or smoking within 10 words of any word beginning with advertis or the words billboards or marketing within 10 words of woman or women or girls]

After all your search terms have been typed in, click on the Search button to the right of the search entry box to begin the search. A results page showing citations for the retrieved set of records will be displayed.

If there are more than 1000 articles with the given terms, Lexis/Nexis will respond by telling you that you should edit your original search terms to make your search more specific. Add an additional concept, if appropriate.

6. If you do a search that successfully retrieves a large number of articles, you often need to limit your number of articles further. There are two options:

• You can go back and edit your previous search by clicking on the Edit Search link, just to the right of your search terms on the results page.
• You can add additional concepts, i.e. search term(s) to your previous search by clicking on the FOCUS™ - Narrow Results link near the top of the page The Focus option in effect automatically ANDs your additional search term(s) to your previous search. (You can also think of this as a search within a search.)

7. Once your search has retrieved a reasonable number of articles, you can browse the list of citations for those articles (most recent articles are listed first), ten citations per page. You can move up and down the list by clicking on the Next and Previous arrows at the top of the page.

8. To view the full text of for a particular citation, click on the the periodical title (listed in blue underlined text.) To go back to the citation list, click on the Back button on your browser toolbar or the View: Cite link at the top right of the page.

9. To retrieve articles or citations, there are various options:

• To print out or save (download) an article that you are viewing, click on the Text Only link at the upper right of the page. The page will then be reformatted so that just the article is displayed. You can then use the browser Print or Save As commands to print or download the article. (If downloading, be sure to save as a text file.)
• To email one or more articles or citations, click on the Email link at the upper right of the page. The "Email Documents" page will then be displayed. Be sure to specify which article(s)--by number from the citations list--to email and the document format--either full (full-text) or cite (citation). Enter your email address and then click the Email button at the lower right of the page.
• To save (download) one or more articles or citations, click on the Download link at the upper right of the page. The "Download Documents" page will then be displayed. Be sure to specify which article(s)--by number from the citations list--to download and the document format--either full (full-text) or cite (citation) and then click the Download button at the lower right of the page.

11. When you have completed a search session on Lexis-Nexis, you must sign off. To sign off, click on Sign Off at the upper right or at the bottom of page.

Logical Operators

• OR: to broaden search (to search for either term in any record)
• AND: to limit search (to search for both terms in any record)
• AND NOT: to limit search (to search for first term but not second term in any record)

Proximity Operators

• W/n: first term must be within n words of the second term, in any order
• PRE/n: first term must precede second term by n words.

Truncation:

• ! is used as truncation for multiple characters
• * is used as a wildcard for a single character.

Singular/Plural

• Lexis-Nexis automatically searches for standard singular, plural or possessive forms of any search terms, e.g. dog retrieves dog OR dogs OR dog's

Field Searching (called "Segment" searching in Lexis.)

• To limit your search to a specific segment, type the segment name followed by your search term(s) in parentheses, e.g. hlead (cigarette advertising w/10 women) or headline (death penalty).
• To display a list of the segments used in a particular file, click on the Segments button (at bottom of screen, blue column).

These materials may be used for educational purposes if you inform and credit the author and cite the source as: Skyline College Library. All commercial rights are reserved. To contact the author, or send comments or suggestions, email: Eric Brenner at brenner@smccd.net