News and tips by and for staff providing reference services at the Newman Library, Baruch College (New York, NY).
By default, when you go to Westlaw via our database link, it takes you into the legal search page. If you want to search for new articles, you have to click the “News” link in the “Browse” box lower down on the page, as noted in this screenshot:
Once you click “News” you’ll see a news search page that looks like this:
Another story in the “unintuitive interface design” category: if you want to search in Westlaw for news articles, don’t run the search from the landing page that our database link first takes you to. If you do run a search from that page, all the results will be from legal materials.
Instead, you’ll want to first click “News” from the options below the search box:
Users who want to connect to WestlawNext Campus Research from home should not have any more problems (the search box had been missing if you were using any browser except for IE).
After I called technical support at Thomson, they sent me some additional lines to add to the database stanza in the configuration file in EZproxy. After I restarted the EZproxy server and tested the connection from my office and my home, it was apparent that the EZproxy settings were the source the problem (actually, it’s the vendor that started this by making changes to the interface and system without notifying customers like us so we could then tinker with our EZproxy servers as needed).
UPDATE 25 March 2017: The problem has now been fixed.
While we are having no problems with on campus access to WestlawNext Campus Research, we are seeing an odd problem with off campus access. Unless you use Internet Explorer when you are off campus, you will see that when you log into WestlawNext Campus Research that the search box at the top of the interface is missing. Please advise any users who are reporting problems with this database to switch over to Internet Explorer.
As soon as we can get a fix for this, I’ll update the reference blog.
Without any notice, Thomson switched us over to the new WestlawNext platform for their campus research product (that’s the one that offers both news and legal sources). The database is now working and accessible from a new URL. Now that the database is on the new platform, we’ve updated the listing on our databases page from “Westlaw Campus Research” to “WestlawNext Campus Research.”
Next week, I’ll do a blog post here comparing what we have in WestlawNext Campus Research to what we get in WestlawNext Patron Access (that’s the one that is limited to two simultaneous users and is only primary legal sources).
Westlaw Campus Research is unavailable right now. It appears that they’ve migrated the database to a new URL (and a new platform) but didn’t notify us of that new address. We’ve sent a support ticket to the vendor and hope for a quick resolution (maybe a day or so).
WestlawNext is working but our license limits us to two simultaneous users.
UPDATE 29 October 2015 This database is now working again and has been renamed WestlawNext Campus Research.
For the past few days, we’ve been getting a login screen from Westlaw Campus Research on and off campus that we shouldn’t be seeing:
We’ve contacted the vendor to have them look into this problem. When access is restored, there’ll be a new post here on the blog.
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.
If you go to our Serials Solutions A-Z journal tool and find a link for a journal into Westlaw Campus, you’ll find that the link doesn’t work. You get to a Westlaw page that says:
The value of your SP parameter, SPPARM, has not been registered.
If you know your Westlaw password, click here to sign on to westlaw.com
I’ve contacted Mike Waldman about the problem, who is looking into and has in the meanwhile put this message next to links to Westlaw in search results in Serials Solutions:
Link not working at this time. Please connect directly to database via Databases page
So if you’ve found in Serials Solutions that the journal needed is in Westlaw, you’ll want to launch Westlaw directly via the databases page and then use the “publications list” feature in the Westlaw interface to drill down to the journal.
UPDATE: Problem fixed.
As agreed with the business librarians.
We still have access to the information via Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw Campus (News).