Document Actions
Law
Using LexisNexis Academic
See the LexisNexis Academic Video Tutorial at YouTube for a quick multimedia introduction to using LexisNexis Academic.
See the LexisNexis® Support Center for a comprehensive guide to doing research and using Academic.
See the Help menu for detailed information on specific aspects of using LexisNexis® Academic.
Connecting
If you are on a UNT campus or using a UNT Internet service, follow these steps to access the database.
- Log into the UNT Libraries Home page at <http://www.library.unt.edu>.
- Select Electronic Resources.
- Select L under “Browse Abstract and Index Database titles alphabetically:”
- Select LexisNexis Academic.
If you are not using a UNT Internet service and would like to access this database from off-campus, see our How to Access Electronic Resources page for instructions.
Searching
Choosing a Category
Select a category from the five listed on the LexisNexis Academic homepage, then select a subcategory from the menu in the margin. A search form related to the category you have chosen will appear, with fields suited to that category. Most search forms include a place to enter search terms, a place to select sources, and a place to specify a date or a range of dates. They may contain other fields, depending on the source.
- Easy Search
- Use any of the several search forms on the opening screen to obtain quick access to the most frequently sought information. You can use this relatively intuitive interface to find newspaper articles, court opinions, company information, country reports, and biographies.
- Power Search
- More experienced users may wish to start with the Power Search form, which includes special tools such as the Index Terms look-up and supports sophisticated query language techniques for Boolean Searching.
- News
- Use this category to search general interest magazines,
newspapers, legal and business news, wire services, broadcast
transcripts, reviews, blogs, and online publications. The
News form allows you to build news and
company searches using connectors, document sections, and
index terms.
- US Legal
- Use this category to find law review articles, cases, statutes, regulations, patent information, and directories of lawyers and law schools. Cases can be searched by party name or citation, and the Shepard's® Citations feature allows you to enter a case or law review citation to retrieve prior and subsequent history and all citing references.
- Companies
- Use
this category to find full-text company financial information,
including annual reports, SEC filings, and directory listings. The
Company Dossier feature allows you to create a customized report on one company or a comparison of several companies based on criteria you have
specified.
- Sources
- Use this category to find a specific source by keyword, title, or alphabetical list, or browse a list of sources by publication type, topic, industry, or area of law. Certain sources can be combined and searched simultaneously.
Entering a Search Request
Type your search term or terms in the fields provided in the search form. (The exact layout of the search form varies depending on which category you are searching.)
- In a General Power search, News search, or Legal search, you can select whether to enter your search in a natural language or terms and connectors format. In the terms and connectors format, use Boolean connectors to show the relationships among your terms. In the natural language format, a question, a sentence, or a few descriptive terms. Use quotation marks to indicate an exact phrase, but do not use Boolean connectors or wildcard characters such as ! or * in a natural language search.
- Depending on which form you are in, you may be able to restrict your search by adding index terms, selecting a specific source or group of sources, and selecting a date or range of dates. There may be other more specific search criteria you can enter in the form.
- For help in constructing your search, click on the blue
question mark button in the upper right corner of the form. There may
also be related links in the margin describing how to do specific kinds
of searches.
After completing the search form, click on the red "Search" button in the upper right corner of the form. If you change your mind about what you want to search and wish to start over, you can click on the "Clear Form" link in the lower right to erase everything you have typed in.
- If your search finds no documents, select "Edit Search" from the Next Steps menu in the upper right corner to return to the search form and revise your original search, or select "New Search" from the Next Steps menu to clear the form and start over.
- If your search find too many documents, select "Edit Search" from the Next Steps menu in the upper right corner to return to the search form and try narrowing your search with additional terms, or try limiting by date or by source. You can also narrow your search in the results list by entering terms in the "Narrow Search" box in the upper right corner.
- If your search finds an acceptable number of documents, review
them for usefulness. Results can be sorted by relevancy or by date.
Using Boolean Connectors
Boolean Searching can be used to build sophisticated queries that have high recall (they return almost all relevant documents in the database) and high precision (they do not return many irrelevant documents).Narrowing Your Search
When you are viewing your results, a "Search within results" box will appear in the upper right corner of the Results screen.
Use the "Search within results" box to search for a more specific topic within your original search results. The result will be a subset of your original results.
Limiting by Date or Source
Many of the search forms allow you to limit your results to a specific date or range of dates and/or to a specific source or group of sources. Always check the form before sending it to make sure you are searching the correct dates and sources. The default settings may not be what you expect.
Viewing the Results of a Search
Selecting a Format
You may look at your search results in several different view formats, each of which displays a different level of detail. Select the desired format from the Show drop-down list on the Results form:
- List
- Displays only the most basic information, in a numbered list, about the documents your search found. Click one of the results to view the full text of the document. Select the check box next to a result to tag the document for viewing or delivery.
- Expanded List
- Displays the same information as in List View for each document, plus a few words on each side of your search terms to put them in context. Click on one of the results to view the full text of the document, or select the check box next to a result to tag the document for viewing or delivery.
- Full Document
- Displays the full text of the documents your search found. Select the check box next to the title to tag the document for delivery.
- Full with Indexing
- Displays the full text of the documents your search found and highlights the terms used in the search. Select the check box next to the title to tag the document for delivery.
- Custom
- Contains all of the functionality of Full Document view, but allows you to select the document sections that you want to view. For example, if you want to view only the body of your documents plus the headline and date, click Custom and then select only those sections. The custom view that you create is used when you search within results or perform or "more like this" search, or when you deliver documents from the current results set. However, the custom view will be reset after your next search.
- KWIC (Keyword in Context)
- Displays each of your search terms surrounded by a window of 25 words and includes all of the functionality of Full Document view.
Sorting Search Results
If you are using the List View or Expanded List View, you can change the order in which your results are displayed according to the type of information you are looking for.
To change the order, select a sort format from the Sort drop-down list on the Results form. Sort options vary according to the type of documents in your results, but may include Publication Date, Relevance, and Chronology, among others.
If you have already tagged items for viewing or delivery, sorting will clear the tagged check boxes.
Moving Within Your Results
The Results page offers several ways for you to move quickly through the documents in your search results. Navigation buttons on the page let you move through documents in a results list or though search terms in an individual document.
Tagging Documents in Results
You may select, or "tag", selected documents in your results for delivery or viewing. For example, if you tag documents 1, 6 and 10 in your results, you may print, view, or save just those tagged documents later.- To tag a document, select the check box next to the
document name.
- To tag all documents on a particular page of a results
list, select the check box on the far left of the gray bar above the
results.
- To print, email, or download tagged documents, click the
appropriate delivery icon at the right of the Results form. On the
delivery form that appears, you'll see the document numbers you tagged
displayed in the Selected Items box under Document Range.
- To view only the documents that you have tagged, click the View Tagged button on the Results form. To see all results again after viewing the tagged items, click the "View All Results" button.
Printing, Downloading, or E-Mailing
Once you have found documents that are useful, you can have the documents delivered in several ways:
If you'd like to view, print, or save (download) only a document's text, and not the navigation bars, graphics, or options on the screen, click the "Print Preview" button on the Print form. The page redisplays, containing only text. To exit the Print Preview feature and return to the previous screen, click your browser's Back button.
- To print the text-only page, use your browser's Print function.
- To save (download) the text-only page, use your browser's Save or Save As function.
- To copy the text-only page, use your browser's Select All function (normally under the Edit menu), select Copy, and then paste the text into a new or existing word processing document.
To have a document delivered, follow this procedure:
- Submit your search request.
- Review the documents in your search results. Click one or more check boxes to choose which documents you want to deliver. (If your search results return only one document, the check boxes will not appear.)
- In the upper right corner of any browse page, click the icon for the delivery method you want to use: Print, Download, or Email. Or, click the Add to folder button (Add to delivery folder) to place the documents you selected in the Delivery Folder for up to 24 hours, to deliver later. When you are ready to deliver documents from the folder, click the Go to delivery folder icon in the top navigation bar.
- Provide the information on the form that appears, and then submit your delivery request.
Printing a Document
- Click the Print icon (Print icon) from any search results page, as described above.
- Click the Print button on the Print form.
- Follow the directions in the displayed window to print the document to
your attached printer.
Downloading a Document
E-Mailing a Document
While using the LexisNexis Academic service, you may E-mail documents in your search results to yourself or to others. Click the E-mail icon on any search results page. On the form that appears:
- Specify the documents you want to deliver and the results format.
- Enter an E-mail address (you may send to up to 3 E-mail recipients, including yourself).
- Add a brief note to the E-mail if you wish.
- Specify whether you want a cover page and end page.
