Academic Universe for Local Newspapers

Academic Universe for Searching Newspapers

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Last Updated on September 27, 1999

INTRODUCTION

Academic Universe (http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe) is one of the most comprehensive sources for the full text of local newspapers in the United States. Local newspapers provide the details of county and municipal government and politics unavailable elsewhere.

Although this guide illustrates search protocols for local newspapers, Academic Universe has the full text of newspapers around the world as well as television transcripts, business and medical news, federal and state laws and court decisions, European Union law (CELEX), and selected reference materials (World Almanac, Roper public opinion polls, biographies, and state statistical data).

LOGGING IN

1. Open your web browser from the University of Michigan campus or from home using the University's ITD telecommunications package and the phone number: 489-2222.

2. Open the URL: http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/

3. The initial screen shows five files:

News	U.S., local, and international newspapers in English and foreign languages; transcripts (television, radio, Congressional press releases, transcripts of hearings; college newspapers; popular magazines
Business	Business news; corporate financial reports; 10K reports
Medical	Medline and popular medical news
Legal	Federal and state laws and court decisions; Code of Federal regulations; CELEX data base of European Union laws; Congressional Universe is more detailed for federal legislation
Reference	World Almanac; brief statistics on the 50 states; biographies; Roper public opinion polls

4. The lefthand frame provides hot links to other Universe products available on campus.

Congressional Universe

Statistical Universe indexes federal, state, and international agency statistics as well as business and private association data.

Access to Primary Sources is an index of historic microfilm sets (Presidential office files, ante-bellum records, National Security Council). Most of the corresponding microform is located in the Serials/Microforms Room of the Graduate Library.

State Capital Universe will be included by January 2000 and will cover state bills, laws, regulations, and political news.

5. You can browse the list of sources for Academic Universe by clicking on the SOURCE button at the top.

6. For local U.S. newspapers, choose NEWS and then U.S. NEWS

7. The default screen is BASIC SEARCH. This search menu only searches keywords in the headline and lead paragraph. Choose MORE OPTIONS to search the full text.

CONTENTS

8. Determine which newspapers are covered in different regions by clicking on sources next to the box. A list of newspapers by region is also available at http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/acaduniv/acnews.html.

Another option is to search for a state covered in the alternative box.

KEYWORD

9. Enter your keywords in the first search box. The truncation symbol is an exclamation mark (!), yielding election or elections! or electoral. Use the pulldown box to choose whether you want those keywords in the headline, lead paragraph, full text, author or caption fields.

10. You can combine keywords in the two succeeding boxes by using keyword operators in the pulldown menus: AND, OR, AND NOT, WITHIN 5 WORDS, WITHIN 10 WORDS, WITHIN 25 WORDS, WITHIN SAME SENTENCE, WITHIN SAME PARAGRAPH. These Boolean operators can also be used in the Basic Search or in one box of the More Options Search (e.g. orange county w/p election! and not Congress!

Boolean Logic	AND	bank AND deregulate	finds both words in the same document
	OR	doctor OR physician	finds either word in same document
	AND NOT	Titanic AND NOT movie	finds first word without the second
	ATLEASTn (term)	atleast5 (budget)	finds term number of times
	ALLCAPS	allcaps (AIDS)	finds AIDS but not aids
	NOCAPS	nocaps (mace)	finds mace but not MACE
Proximity Indicators	PHRASE SEARCHING	buying power	retrieves two words together
	W/n	economic growth w/3 indicators	retrieves phrase within three words of indicators e.g. economic growth indicators or indicators of economic growth
	W/p	pakistan w/p nuclear	retrieves words in same paragraph
	W/s	pakistan w/s nuclear	retrieves words in same sentence
	PRE/n	william pre/2 clinton	retrieves first word within two of second word
	Not W/n	Michigan not/w10 university	retrieves farther appart than 10
	Not W/s	Clinton not w/2 Yeltsin	retrieves words not in same sentence
	Not W/p	Clinton not w/p Yeltsin	Retrieves words if not in same paragraph
	Not PRE/n	University not pre/2 Michigan	retrieves if one word not in front of other
Truncation Symbol	Asterisk *	replaces one character anywhere in word except first letter	*womn retrieves woman or women**
Truncation Symbol	Exclamation Point !	replaces one or more character at end of word	child! retrieves child or children or childhood

11. Choose date range from EITHER the PRE-DETERMINED LIST (today, last week, last month, last six months, last year, last two years, last five years, last ten years, all dates) OR FREE TEXT. Samples of the free text list appear at the bottom of the search page.

12. Choose a range of sources (Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, Western) OR information about a particular state.

SEARCH RESULTS

12. Search results are sorted in reverse chronological order (most recent first). You can change the order by clicking on the SORT BY RELEVANCE button at the top.

13. Once you have sorted by relevance, you can click on the EXPANDED LIST button at the top to view keywords and further determine relevance.

14. An example of the Expanded List with keywords is shown below. You can click on the individual article at that point to view the full text.

15. The full text of the article is shown below. You can click on the button at the top to view with KWIC version (keywords in context).

16. Printing and downloading can be done at this point.

17. There are also two ways to edit the search from the top of the screen: EDIT SEARCH and FOCUS SEARCH

EDITING A SEARCH

18. A search can be edited by changing the keywords or date. It can also be edited by inserting the title of an individual publication in the box at the bottom. If you aren't sure of the title, check the source list and paste the name of the publication to the search.

19. To narrower the search, click on the FOCUS button at the top of the RESULTS LIST or the FOCUS box at the bottom of an individual article. The term AND is assumed. The search below reads:

orange county w/p election! and not Congress! and (municipal or local or mayor!)

PRINTING/DOWNLOADING/E-MAILING

20. Printing and downloading an individual articles must be done while viewing it.

21. You can also print or e-mail your results list. First, check off the boxes next to the articles you want. Then click on the E-MAIL option at the top of the screen.

22. The E-MAIL list will give you prompts.

23. The PRINT/SAVE prompts will give you similar commands.

Grace York, Documents Center
Documents Center
For comments and suggestions, contact graceyor@umich.edu

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/acaduniv/aclocal.html

Since September 25, 1999 this page has been accessed

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