Lexis-Nexis Academic

IMPORTANT NOTE Lexis-Nexis Academic, despite the word "Academic" in its name, indexes very few scholarly journals. The only scholarly journals it DOES have are in the LEGAL and MEDICAL subfiles. It will give you the full text of selected articles from newspapers and popular news and commentary/opinion magazines. Selected means just what it sounds like, not every article, but just some. There is no way to anticipate exactly which articles have been selected from any issue or date.

What kind of articles do you want?

Select Lexis-Nexis Academic from the library's list of databases, under L. You will automatically be in the News subfile.

Start in the Guided News Search screen, which looks like this:

Step One You will need to Select a News Category. Use the pulldown menu to choose. General News, the first one in the list, is most often the best. Step Two You must select a Source. The pulldown menu here groups sources. The first, Major Papers, is the broadest. Most often this is the best one. If you do have a specific publication in mind, like the New York Times. Click on SOURCE LIST and choose it. Step Three This is covered below, in the section under Enter. Step Four Consider carefully the time frame you are searching in! You can enter years, in 4-digits or even specific days/months as in: 4/96 or 4/12/96.

Enter your subject search statement on one line under Step Three. Here is some important advice:

Use Boolean operators to connect keywords and phrases. Some examples:

legalization AND marijuana
(television OR media) AND violence AND children
spotted owl AND (logging OR pacific lumber)

Use truncation to be sure to get common variations of words. Some examples:

legaliz! AND marijuana
(television OR media) AND violen! AND child!
spotted owl* AND (logg! OR pacific lumber)

Printing and Emailing

As you review your search results on the Document List screen, you will see the Tag option next to each title on the left of the list:

Click in the little box next to the ones you want to print or email. You can only do this from the Document List screen, not when you are actually reading a full document. After you have marked the ones you want, click on your choice, in the upper right of the screen.

If you want to print a document you are reading, click on the button to reformat it before using the File-Print option on your browser.

For Legal Topics click on Legal Research in the left panel.

You are then presented with a long screen of options, everything from legal news through laws, codes, regulations, patents, etc. Each of these has their own search options! If you just want some readable periodical articles from the legal community, select Legal News. You will get a screen that looks like this:

Step One: Odds are, you do not want to change the News Category. Step Two: Don't change this unless you want to search in one specific newspaper or magazine. In that case, click on the Source List and make your selection. For Step Three, read the section on Enter. For Step Four, adjust the dates using the pulldown menu or by entering years, or even months in the From: To: boxes as in 1996, 8/96.

For Medical Topics click on Medical in the left panel.

You are then presented with three choices:

There are better ways to search Medline, so, if it is Medline you want, return to the library's list of databases and go directly to Medline. Medical Journals are much more technical than Medical News. You might want to start with Medical News. Once you select one of those, you will be presented with a search screen:

Step One: Odds are, you do not want to change this as you just selected it! Step Two: Don't change this unless you want to search in one specific newspaper or magazine. In that case, click on the Source List and make your selection. For Step Three, read the section on Enter. For Step Four, adjust the dates using the pulldown menu or by entering years, or even months in the From: To: boxes as in 1996, 8/96.

This page created and maintained by Gail Gradowski, Orradre Library, Santa Clara University. Last updated 13 September 2004.