What is LexisNexis Academic?

LexisNexis Academic is a full-text database of news, legal, and 
reference information, updated daily. It is most often 
used for finding current events in newspaper articles 
and legal information, but it also has much more, such 
as business and statistical information. Most of the 
articles in LexisNexis Academic are full-text. 

Take note!
Just because a database is full-text does not mean 
that it contains the entire article. Frequently, 
items like side bars or small articles-within-articles 
are omitted, as well as pictures. 

LexisNexis Academic may be accessed from on or off 
LSU campus. To get there:

Go to the LSU Libraries Home Page at 
http://www.lib.lsu.edu. 

Click on Indexes and Databases. 
On the left of the screen, under "Frequently Used 
Databases, choose "LexisNexis Academic."  This database 
may be accessed from on campus, or off campus by LSU 
faculty, students, and staff.

LexisNexis Academic offers a wide choice of databases;
this e-struction message concerns the ones in which 
you will find newspaper and magazine articles. They 
are most frequently used. Most, but not all of the 
databases work roughly the same way these do.

Quick Info:  This is the default search, and it 
searches the newspapers, but only the lead paragraphs,
headlines, and other primary fields.  It does not 
search the full text of the articles.

News: Use this database to find newspaper articles, 
including articles from the Baton Rouge Advocate or 
the New Orleans Times Picayune.
 
Business: This database searches Business news, trade 
journals, company financial information, Industry & 
Market data and much more.

Legal Research: Covers legal documents, and newspaper 
and magazine articles related to the government and 
legislature. Accessing laws and other legal 
information is covered in the Advanced portion of this 
tutorial.
 
Medical: Includes articles about medicine and health. 
You can also search the Medline periodical database 
from here. 

Reference: This is a "catch-all" section allowing you 
to search for facts through an online world almanac 
for various kinds of information. 

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SEARCHING

Click on News.  There are different subdivisions in 
this database.  For U.S. news, I recommend General 
News, where you can search national newspapers like 
the New York Times, or U.S. News, where you can search 
for articles in smaller regional newspapers.

To get articles from papers published in Louisiana, 
choose U.S. News from the drop down menu.

Select Region OR State: You must chose an option from
this drop-down list. Publications from Louisiana are 
found in the "Southeast Regional Sources," or you can
choose "Louisiana New Sources."

There are several input boxes for your search terms. 
You must fill in at least one of them. 

By default, this field only searches the title and lead 
paragraphs, so if one of your search terms might only 
be mentioned later in a story, select "Full Text" for
the field.

You may add terms in the other keyword input boxes.

Typing in a string of terms searches for that whole 
string. "Americans With Disabilities Act" will 
retrieve all the words used together.

Date: By default, this field is set to search articles 
published only in the last six months, but you can 
choose to search a different time frame from the drop 
down box or even specify a date range by using the 
"From" and "To" boxes.

If LexisNexis Academic can match your search criteria, 
then it presents you with a list of articles. Once you 
have the list, click on the article link to see the 
full-text.

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Moving around in LexisNexis Academic

Once you have executed your search, you will see a 
screen with a list of documents. Notice the navigation 
buttons on the screen, along with your results. 
Some are self explanatory (like "Home"), but some 
aren't (like KWIC): 

Home - Goes back to the LexisNexis Academic Home Page. 

Sources - Links to a list of the items (newspapers, 
magazines, etc.) indexed by LexisNexis Academic. 

How Do I ... - a list of search hints for more common 
search requests. 

Overview - a site index of the different database 
subdivisions. 

Help - more help using LexisNexis Academic, including 
how to cite references. 

Edit Search - Returns you to your last search screen. 

FOCUS - Allows you to narrow your search by adding 
words or phrases to the original search. 

Print Options - Takes you to the print page.  

E-Mail - Takes you to the e-mail page which allows 
you to e-mail documents to yourself or someone else, 
including an instructor.

!!! The print and e-mail options only print or e-mail 
what you see on the screen.  If you want to print or 
email the full text of an article, you must click the 
link to the article before clicking print or email !!!
 
Search Terms - This shows you your search terms. 

Document List - The default display of your results 
list, includes basic information. 

Expanded List - Displays your results list with the 
search term in context surrounded by about 5 words. 

KWIC - "Key Words In Context," displays your results 
with the search terms in context of about 20 words. 

Full - Displays the full text of your search results. 

Sorted By Date - This is the default. Results are 
sorted by date of publication, most recent first. 

Previous - Move to a display of the previous document, 
or previous set of results. 
 
Next - Move to a display of the next document, or next 
set of results. 

Jump to Documents - Allows you to move to any set of 
your results. 

To the left of each search result, you will see check 
boxes. Click the boxes to mark citations for printing, 
e-mail, or saving. 

For our web tutorials on LexisNexis Academic, please 
see.  LexisNexis Academic also has excellent help pages
with more information.

http://www.lib.lsu.edu/instruction/tutorials.html