LexisNexis Academic Universe - Database Search Aid

LexisNexis Academic Universe is a Web-based service that contains full-text articles and documents from hundreds of newspapers, magazines, news wires, transcripts, company reports, and government publications. Strengths for business researchers include the wide range of materials available and the currency of the information. This guide describes basic LexisNexis Academic Universe commands and strategies for retrieving business information.

I. HOW TO SEARCH

1. Choose search module and subcategory:

From the Main Menu, select Business and choose appropriate subcategory form. The following subcategories are available: Business News, Company Financials, Compare Companies, SEC Filings & Reports, Industry & Marketing, Accounting, Directories.

2. Select the More Options search form, when available, for more precise searching:

The Business News and Industry search forms contain a More Options tab. Click on the tab for a search form that allows full-text searching, field searching, limiting a search to a specific publication, and other advanced search options. Using the Basic Search form allows you to search headlines and lead paragraphs by keyword.

3. Enter search terms:

You may use words or phrases and may combine them with AND, OR, or other connectors. You may also use universal characters in your search terms.

AND = intersections of terms, e.g., microsoft and competition
OR = union of terms, e.g., merger or buyout

Universal characters:
* = universal character for internal and end-of-root truncation,
e.g., wom*n retrieves both woman and women
Use ** to denote characters, *** to denote 3, etc.
! = end-of-root truncation, any number of characters

NOTE: Connectors and Universal Characters may be used in both Basic and More Options search forms. See Tips section on each search form for specifics.

4. Advanced techniques for More Options search form:

A. Field searching:

You may restrict your search to specific parts, or fields, of articles for a more precise search. For instance, if you know the headline of an article and want to retrieve the full-text, you may search just the headlines of articles by selecting Headline from the pulldown menu. Then, in the box, enter the headline.

Searches may be limited to various other fields, depending upon the search form. Other fields commonly available to search include author, company name, SIC code, ticker symbol. See the Tips on each search form for specifics and examples.

B. Searching specific publications: If you would like to search just one particular publication, you may do so from the More Options search form. Enter the title of the publication, i.e., New York Times, in the box labeled Search this publication title. You may use the adjacent Source List link to see whether or not the publication is included in LexisNexis Universe.

5. Make Date and Source material selections from pulldown menus.

6. Click Search button.

II. HOW TO DISPLAY, EMAIL, PRINT and SAVE

1. To display:

Your search will return a documents list, which gives source, date, length and other basic information about the articles you have retrieved. To view the full-text of one of the articles, click on the name of the publication (underlined hypertext link).

2. To email:

You may email articles you retrieve to your email address. While viewing the desired article, click on the Email button at the top of the screen. Enter your email address in the first box and, if you like, notes in the second box. Click on the Email button.

3. To print and save:

While viewing the desired article, click on the Print/Save Options button at the top of the screen. Click on Display Document button, and you will display the article only, without the function bar and other graphics. Print or save using your browser's print/save functions. Many browsers will work as follows:
To Print: Click the Print button on your browser's toolbar.
To Save:
Select File, then Save as from your browser's menu. Add a .txt extension to the file name.
In the Library, be sure to save to a: or c:\User

III. TIPS

1. Searching names:

A. Companies: While searching for articles about a company, include all variations of the company name.

Examples:

NOTE: LexisNexis automatically searches for some words and abbreviations that are equivalents to each other. For example, a search for the word Co. will find articles/documents containing Co. as well as the word Company, because they are equivalents.

Some company names are unique and do not require you to search the words Company, Corp., and Corporation to find relevant articles. For example, to find articles/documents for IBM Corp., it is unnecessary to search for the word Corp.

B. People:

Use the w/3 connector to join a person's first name and last name. The w/3 connector finds the first name within three or fewer words of the last name. Consider also spelling, spacing, and punctuation alternatives.

Examples:

2. Capitalization: LexisNexis searches do not require capitalization, but you may use it for greater precision.

Use the CAPS, NOCAPS, or ALLCAPS commands as follows:

3. Plurals and singulars:

LexisNexis automatically searches singular, regular plural and plural possessive endings for search words. For example, a search on the term company will find company, companies and company's.

However, if you use a noun and an irregular plural ending, you will not automatically get the plurals and plural possessive. Use the OR connector to search for both singular and plural forms of a word.

Examples:

If you want only the plural or singular form of a word, you may use the plural or singular command to restrict retrieval to the desired form.

Examples:

4. Using parentheses to group concepts:

When multiple connectors are used in a search, they are processed in the following priority order:

1. or
2. w/n
3. w/s
4. w/p
5. and
6. and not

Sometimes the priority in which connectors operate has an unintended effect on your search request. To get the desired results, use parentheses to group your concepts.

For example, you might think the following search will find documents about Bill Gates or Larry Ellison: bill w/3 gates or larry w/3 ellison

However, LexisNexis Universe resolves this search as follows:

1. gates or larry
2. bill within three or fewer words of gates or larry
3. ellison within three or fewer words of gates or larry that is also within three or fewer words of bill

Use parentheses to force the names to stay together as one search concept. For this example, you would enter: (bill w/3 gates) or (larry w/3 ellison)

The parentheses override the normal priority of connectors, allowing each concept to be resolved separately. This search will find articles about Bill Gates or Larry Ellison.

5. Narrowing your search to retrieve only relevant articles:

Once you have entered a search and retrieved a large results set, there are two ways to narrow it:

a. Click on the Sort by Relevance button at the top of the display (just below format tabs). Your documents will then be shown with the most relevant documents at the top of the list. This sort feature is avialble only in the Expanded List or Document List display formats.

b. If you know some additional search terms that you would like your answer set to include, click on the FOCUS search button. The FOCUS feature allows you to work with your result set only, rather than running a new search. Enter search terms in the FOCUS box, and only articles from your original answer set that also contain these terms will be retrieved.

6. Finding information about sources:

You may find out what sources are included in LexisNexis Universe by clicking on the Sources button in the top navigation bar or by clicking on the Source List link within the search forms.