More about Lexis/Nexis searches

[Bethany K. Dumas]

The ff. information was just sent to me by our humanities librarian (who
also provided the earlier information I sent):

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 18:28:52 -0400 (EDT)
To: Bethany Dumas <dumasb at utk.edu>
Subject: Lexis/Nexis

I've learned more about keyword searching in Lexis/Nexis Academic
Universe.  (It's amazing what you learn if you ask the right people.)

In some of the files the DEFAULT keyword search is in the title and
lead paragraph.  This is what it says in the "General News" file:

        Keyword searches the headline and lead paragraph(s) of articles.

There is, however, a "More Options" button that will allow you to search
in other elements of the article.

Some files, such as the Law Reviews, do indeed search the full-text as a
default.  (That's where I was searching the other day when I told you I
was getting results from parts of the article other than lead paragraph.)

This is potentially very dangerous, I think, because people will not
realize they are only searching in the lead paragraphs.  But I'm told
that they will probably not change the current default.  Oh well.


Bethany