Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Nexis Uni

Formerly “LexisNexis Academic”

LexisNexis has a new interface

LexisNexis launched today their new search interface.

Some of the enhancements include:

  • A simple, streamlined design
  • A more intuitive place to start your research
  • One-step search capability
  • Improved options for advanced queries

Here is some material that LexisNexis has put out to help with the transition:

Please let me know if you encounter anything that does not work.

Saving Articles from LexisNexis to Dropbox

LexisNexis Academic now lets searchers save documents to their Dropbox accounts. The user doesn’t have to be on a computer where the Dropbox software has been installed; it will in fact work from any computer that the user is on. When you find an article or group of articles that you want to save to your Drobox account, you click the new “Send to Dropbox” icon that looks like a little cloud:

A window from LexisNexis pops up where you select the format you’d like to save in (Word, HTML, PDF, etc.) Then when you click the Send button in that window, a new window opens from Dropbox asking you to sign in to Dropbox in the browser and allow LexisNexis to create a folder in your Dropbox account where the files will be stored. Once you sign in and allow LexisNexis to connect to Dropbox, the files will be saved to your account.

More details can be found on this help page from LexisNexis.

Baruch staff and faculty who use Dropbox should be aware of CUNY policy against using Dropbox (and other cloud storage services) to store confidential university information there  (details on what counts as “confidential” can be found in the security memo on the CUNY website page about information security).

NY Times and Washington Post temporary access glitch on LexisNexis

From LexisNexis:

LexisNexis Academic is experiencing technical issues with some of our major newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. This is a temporary glitch and we apologize for the inconvenience. These issues will be resolved as soon as possible and these publications will again appear in Academic early tomorrow morning.

South Africa resources re shale gas

I have helped several students who are working on a project dealing with South Africa and shale gas. Sometimes this is referred to as shale oil.    They need information on legal requirements, including South African laws, and  economic aspects, and environmental concerns. Shale gas, shale oil, fracking or fracturing, natural gas liquid extraction, or natural  gas extraction are among the keywords that can be searched.  “Environmental concerns” might be described in other terms–water safety, water pollution, water quality, air pollution, etc.

Our legal databases, Lexis Nexis Academic, Westlaw Campus and Westlaw Next, do not have the South African statutes or regulations.  Lexis-Nexis Academic can be searched for news articles about this issue.

South African government websites that have some policy information, as well as pending legislation, can be found at these sites:

Pending bills: http://www.parliament.gov.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=128

Department of Mineral Resources: http://www.dmr.gov.za/  (has information on policies and regulations)

Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs http://www.environment.gov.za/?q=search/node/fracking (report on fracking.)

Some databases that can be helpful, providing news, industry outlooks, include:

ABI Inform Global

Business Monitor International–search shale oil and limit to South Africa

CIAO

Factiva

ISI Emerging Markets–has many news articles and company reports.  Limit search to South Africa.

From looking at some results, I learned that there was moratorium on development late last year, and there are recent articles about what is now being considered.

Areas of South Africa with promising shale gas deposits are in Great Karoo and Little Karoo, also called Wet Karoo.

South African publications can be located by searching Journals/Magazines.  The Economist and The Financial Times can be searched for news articles.

The South African Institute of Mines and Metallurgy is available as an open access journal.  There is an article about fracturing in the most recent issue: http://www.saimm.co.za/journal-papers

The Energy Information Administration for the U.S. has this report re South Africa: http://www.eia.gov/cabs/South_Africa/pdf.pdf

Link to special report on economic aspects: http://www-static.shell.com/static/zaf/downloads/aboutshell/econometrix/econometrix_report.pdf

Other resources may be found by doing a Google search.

I hope these resources are helpful.

Permanent links now available in LexisNexis

LexisNexis has announced that they are supporting the creation of permanent links to their articles. The icon of a clipboard with the link symbol appears on the top right of the screen, near the print and email icons. If you click on that, you will get a link that can be copied and pasted. More information can be found here.

Just a reminder that this link does not contain the remote prefix, so it will be availalable on campus only (or after authenticating). Please contact me if you would like to know how to add the remote prefix.

 

 

 

New York’s new “no fault divorce” law

Yesterday I saw that Governor Patterson had signed on Sunday the law informally referred to as “New York’s no-fault divorce law” but officially the Divorce Reform Act of 2010.  Just in case someone makes an inquiry, the new provisions have not yet been incorporated into the New York Statutes in available online in  Westlaw Campus and Lexis-Nexis.  An important change is that irreconcilable differences are now grounds for granting a divorce.

Relevancy Ranking Options

Mike Waldman’s email message today about the upcoming change to the way EBSCOhost databases will show search results (a move from reverse date sorting to relevancy ranking) made me wonder which databases we have that show search results by date as the default and which ones sort by relevance by default. If there are some that sort by date by default, it is possible that Mike can change the settings to relevance.

Here’s a quick roundup of database sorting defaults. Please note that I haven’t included every database we have; just some of the big ones or the ones that use the same platform for access to multiple databases.

Sort by Date by Default

  • Bearcat Search
  • CUNY+
  • EBSCOhost (this will change to relevance soon; Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, etc.)
  • Factiva
  • Gale InfoTrac (for some but not all databases: Academic OneFile, New York State Newspapers)
  • ProQuest (ABI/INFORM Global, Alt Press Watch, Ethnic NewsWatchWall Street Journal, New York Times, etc.)
  • Web of Science (Social Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index)

Sort by Relevance by Default

  • Gale InfoTrac (for some but not all databases: Gale Virtual Reference Library, Opposing Viewpoints Reference Center, Literature Resource Center)
  • LexisNexis Academic
  • WilsonWeb (Library Literature, Reader’s Guide, etc.)

Should we make any changes to these default settings? Please post your comments here.