Database Help:
Lexis-Nexis



Database overview


Database description

Lexis-Nexis is produced by the Lexis-Nexis company. The database is comprised of two sections: Academic Universe and Congressional Universe. Academic Universe primarily contains news, business, legal, medical, and general reference resources. Congressional Universe primarily contains federal legislative resources, including laws, regulations, legislative histories, testimony, and Congressional publications.


Academic Universe

News category

Business category

Note: Additional company financial information can be found in Hoover's Online and on the library web page Business Resources on the Internet.

Legal category

Medical category

General Reference category


Congressional Universe


Accessing Lexis-Nexis

Lexis-Nexis is available through the Library Databases web page or computer terminals in the Library Reference Department.


Using Lexis-Nexis

The following are guidelines for searching in most of the categories within Lexis-Nexis. For a review of searching techniques or help beyond these guidelines, consult the Lexis-Nexis help pages online or ask a librarian.

  1. Complete all entry boxes that are labeled Entry Required.
  2. Choose the source material from the pull down menu arrow (located at the right-hand side of the search entry box).
  3. Date ranges can be entered by the user or selected from the pull down menu arrow.
  4. Use "!" to truncate search terms. (For example, use "president!" to search president, presidente, presidents, and presidential.)
  5. Use "*" to replace a letter or letters in a word. You can use more than one asterisk in a word and you can use it anywhere in a word except as the first letter. (For example, use "wom*n to search woman, women, and womyn.)
  6. Use "w/any number" for proximity searching with the terms in any order. (For example, "exclusion w/5 evidence" will retrieve phrases containing both terms within 5 words of each other and in any order.)
  7. Use "pre/any number" for proximity searching in exact order. This command is especially useful for searching court cases or code sections when you already have a complete citation. (For example, "410 pre/6 113" will retrieve 410 US 113, the Supreme Court decision "Roe v. Wade".) When searching court cases or code sections, the "any number" is the number of characters including possible punctuation marks that may occur between the numbers in the citation. In the other search categories, the "any number" is the number of words between terms.

Note: In the News category, initial search screen searches for keyword terms only in the headline and lead paragraph(s) of the articles. In order to do keyword searches of the complete article text, click on the More Options tag.


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Off-campus Library Services web site created and maintained by the Gee Library reference staff. If you have questions or comments, please contact:

Diane Downing
Head of Reference
Gee Library, Texas A&M University - Commerce
PO Box 3011, Commerce, TX 75429
phone: (903) 886-5719
email: diane_downing@tamu-commerce.edu

Last updated June 2002.