Academic Universe

Lexis-Nexis Universe provides an interface to the powerful Lexis-Nexis news and information service. Lexis-Nexis is a database that contains more than 7,000 English language sources, including full text and abstracts of newspaper articles, magazines, newsletters, trade journals, transcripts and wire services. Sources include the New York Times, CNN, The Economist, AP and NPR. Lexis-Nexis Universe also offers premier news services in French, Italian and German, legal statutes, business directories and corporate profiles.

Lexis-Nexis Universe is not the best place to look for scholarly or biomedical articles, but is an excellent source for current events/news, legal and government information, as well as business news and corporate information.

Structure of Database/How to Begin

The main menu of Lexis-Nexis Universe contains a series of links that point to a specific "search form" or topic. The search forms each differ slightly, providing appropriate choices for source lists and dates, depending on the topic.

The search forms provide a place for you to specify the subject (News, Business, Legal Research, etc.) to research. The forms also allow you to enter additional terms to further refine your search. Additionally, search forms provide drop-down menus from which you may choose to limit your search to a particular source or group of sources and/or a particular time frame (e.g. six months, one year, all years). These options will vary depending on your search topic and its associated search form.

Each form contains a required value, which is indicated by an asterisk. For example:

Each search form also provides basic searching and source information. A full list of Lexis-Nexis Sources is available.

Creating a Search

Nexis is a full text database, so be sure to construct your Quick Search carefully.

Pick terms that are unique to your topic.

String together multiple terms with AND, e.g. gender and difference

Put the central point of your search in the topic box.

Do not use wildcard characters (* and !) to replace characters within a search term.

If you want to link two or more words together so that they are treated as a phrase, enclose them in quotation marks.

You can further refine your search by using the Guided Search.

Select the news category in which you want to search.

Select a news source

Input your search terms into the boxes provided.
You do not need to enclose phrases within quotation marks. Combine the term you are searching with the field of the document where you want the term to appear.
Example: Iraq in Headline

You can enter an author's full name or last name only. If you are having difficulty retrieving articles searching for a full name, use a w/3 connector between the first name and last name.
Example: George w/3 Will

You can use connectors (AND, OR, etc.) and special wildcard characters (* and !).

Truncation and Plurals

You can use the following characters to widen the scope of your search.

The asterisk takes the place of one letter:

e.g., cris*s retrieves both crisis and crises

bank*** retrieves bank, banks, banker or banking, but not bankrupt, since it has four letters after the root word bank

The exclamation point takes the place of an infinite number of letters at the end of a word:

e.g., acqui! Retrieves acquire, acquired, acquitted, acquisition, acquiesce, etc.

Proximity

The w/ command allows you to connect words by their proximity to one another.

e.g., w/3 finds words within three words of each other

(Bill or William) w/3 Clinton retrieves Bill or William Clinton as well as William Jefferson Clinton

w/s finds words within the same sentence

w/p finds words with the same paragraph

Viewing Results

Lexis-Nexis Universe offers you different formats in which to view your results:

Document List - which shows the citations retrieved

Expanded List - which shows more of the text of the article

Full View - which provides the full record, including full text when available

KWIC (Key Word in Context) View - which shows your search terms highlighted, along with approximately 50 words around them, 25 words before and 25 words after.

Full - which shows the full text of the article one by one

Revising Searches

If the search you perform yields too much or too little information, you can modify your search and re-run it. To do so, from the document page, click on Search Within Results. You can then limit your search accordingly.

© 2007 Yale University Library
This file last modified 06/01/05
Send comments to smlref@yale.edu