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JOUR 201 - News Writing and Reporting I

A guide to UMD Libraries resources for students registered for JOUR 201

Creating A Search - Step 1: Knowing Where to Look

When searching Nexis Uni it is important to be sure you are looking in the CORRECT place for information.

The four sub-sections under "Searching Nexis Uni" look at the three main areas of information that form the backbone of the product"

  1. Traditional news and web-based news sources
  2. Legal information
  3. Business information.

Nexis Uni Advanced Search Aids

[Edit mode is disabled for mapped boxes]

Within the single search box (not in the search widgets appearing on the bottom of the main LexisNexis screen) you can use the following search aids to refine your search:

/n command (where “n” equals any number you specify between 2 and 255)
Allows you to specify the number of words that appear between two search terms

A rule of thumb:

Use /2 when searching for a person's name:
George /2 Bush

Use /5 when searching for items in the same phrase: 
Hogan /5 budget*

Use /25 when searching for items in the same sentence:
keystone pipeline /25 drilling

Use /50 when searching for items in the same paragraph (NOTE: You can use /p instead of /50 for the same result)
higher education /50 funding
higher education /p funding


! symbol: truncation (multiple characters)
Example: A search of Econ! will result in entries including terms such as: Economic, Economics, Econometric, Econoline, etc.
[Note: You will need to watch for “false hits” when you use truncation! In the example above, results could also include such terms as Econoline, the automobile.]

* symbol: truncation (single character)
Example: A search of rain* will result in entries with rain, rains, rainy in the search results, but not rained.

Saving Your Results

A permanent link to an individual search or article may be copied by clicking on the link function in the Actions drop down menu

 
   

 

Searches or individual Items can also be emailed, downloaded, printed or saved to Dropbox or Google Docs by clicking on the appropriate icon:

 
   

Learn more about working with your search results on Nexis Uni here.