Using Lexis-Nexis to Find an Editorial / The University of Arizona Library

Using Lexis-Nexis to Find an Editorial

Lexis-Nexisis a good source for:

  • finding editorials
  • finding news-related resources

To accessLexis-Nexis:

  • Go to the Library’s website at
  • Under SEARCH & FIND, select Article Database Searching
  • UnderPopular all-purpose Databases, select Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe
  • (If you are doing this off-campus, it should ask for your name and CatCard number.)

There are two ways to find editorials:

1.For topics that are broad and of national interest, use Plan A.

2.If you don’t get enough choices with Plan A, try Plan B.

Plan A – Using Lexis-Nexis Guided News Search

Step One:

Select General News

Step Two:

Select Major Papers

Step Three:

Type in your topickeywords

on one line and the word

editorial onthenext line.

(When typing keywords, be

sure totype the word and between thedifferent concepts.)

We used the keywords:

bush and new orleans along with

editorial

Step Four:

The default time period will bePrevious six months – experimentwith different time periods to get more orfewer results.

We used:Previous year

Step Five:

Click the Search button.

You should get a number of entries back. Our search retrieved over 400 at the time. These are all full-text. They will be Sorted by Date, with the most recent listed first.

Not all the articles you get back will be editorials; some will also be letters to the editor and responses to editorials.You will need to sort through the articles to choose an editorial that fits your topic. You may not be able to tell that you have an editorial until you click on an article and skim the contents.

In our search results below, numbers 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19 and 20 are editorials.The other articles are all letters to the editor.But several of these editorials are right on target for the topic.

Some topics will work better than others for finding editorials.Those topics that are of national interest and that are broader in scope will probably yield more editorials.You will have to read and evaluate the editorials to decide if any of them are appropriate for your assignment.If the above steps don’t work for you topic, try the steps in Plan B.

Plan B – Using Lexis-Nexis Quick News Search

Quick News Search works better for topics that are narrower in scope or that only apply to one region or group in the country or for topics that don’t yield enough articles using Guided New Search.In Quick News Search, you will get back articles based on relevancy – so those articles that have all the words you used in your search will come first.It is better to select the previous two years as the time frame, to get all the relevant articles.

Step One:

Change the searchtoQuick News Search

by clicking the tab at the top of the search box

Step Two:

Type in the keywords for your search.

In Quick News Search

youdonot need to use the connecting word andbut

you do need to put words

you want to use as phrases

in quotes.

We used the keywords:

marine sonar editorial

Step Three:

Select the Date:

Thedefault time period will bePrevious six months – change it to Previous two years to get more results.

Other sample searches:

“drinking water” mining

or

“kyoto protocol” relations

Step Four: Click the Search button

Up to 125 most relevant articles will be returned. They will be Sorted by Relevance – the articles that have all the words you searched will come back first – but not all of them are appropriate. You must pick and choose among them to find an appropriate editorial.

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week4\lexis-nexis.pdf, 9.21.2005