LexisNexis

 

About LexisNexis:
LexisNexis is a part of Reed Elsevier and it is considered one of the world’s largest online electronic libraries of legal opinions, public records, news and business information.¹  The content includes “legal cases, statutes, regulations, citations, tax materials, newspaper, scholarly and professional peer reviewed articles, patents, European law, law school directories, company financial data and analysis, company profiles including contact information for company executives, SEC filings and reports, news, wire services, transcripts, briefings, blogs videos, and other information”.²  Accordingly, it provides access to full-text material in the following content types: newspapers, state and federal cases, law reviews and company profiles.   

Due to the content of this database I decided to search for any relevant news articles.  That said I believe that my original concept analysis is relevant to this database.  Therefore, I began my search query as follows: 


Search Query:

• Is there a correlation between students that are identified as having a learning disability and the high school dropout rate?

I created this concept analysis for my search using natural language: 

	Facet 1	Facet 2
Concept	high school dropout rate	learning disability

Hit = (high school dropout rate) and (learning disabilities)

209 hits were found using natural language key word phrases in the basic search option.  

I then searched the thesaurus for relevant subject terms. I incorporated the thesaurus terms with the natural language terms.  I then selected the advanced option and conducted a search using Build Your Own Segment Search option.  I created the following statement:

Hits = (learning disabilities or learning disorder) and (high school dropout rate or graduation rate)

I applied the following limits:  

• Date range: 10/21/2012 – 10/21/2014
• Index terms: education & training; speech & language disorder; graduation rates

7 hits were retrieved; however I should note that the first 3 hits were all the same article. The best hits were the first three articles: Graduation Disparities Loom Large for Students with Special Needs. The authors of this article examined the gaps in the graduation rates reported for the 2011-12 school year across the United States. They noted a significant difference among students with special needs and those in regular education classrooms. ³
 
I then tried a third search to test the use of proximity operators and Boolean operators.  I
again used the Build Your Own Segment Search in the advanced search interface.  Then I searched using the Boolean statement: (learning w/5 disabilities) AND (graduation rate w/p high school).  The only limit that I placed was no duplication.  486 hits were retrieved.  I then limited the search by the following subject sub set, school drop outs.  This action reduced the hits to 48.  I liked that this search retrieved 486 hit vs. 878 hit retrieved in my initial search.  Then finding a subject sub set school dropout was like finding a little gem.  It significantly reduced the number of hits to 48.  However, this action also skewed my results.  Many of the 48 hits dealt with the general topic of high school dropout rates.  I then limited this result list with the subject sub set, learning disabilities.  This action reduced the number of hit to 27 and significantly increased the precision of my search. 

The best hit was #3. Study Reveals Gaps in Grad. Rates. 

What I learned: Content

This article talks about the national dropout rate of students with learning disabilities and it singles out some of the states with the highest dropout rates. Although, this is a very short article; it does contains a lot of statistical data that reveals a clear picture about the graduation rate among students with learning disabilities as compared to students without learning disabilities.  Furthermore, it states that “many states fall short of the national average of 68 percent for students graduating in the disability category.”⁴

Search the News:

I then searched the Search the News option, using the keyword terms: learning disorder graduation rate.  I also limited the source type to newspapers and turned on the duplication option to high.  878 hits were retrieved.  Since the result list was so large I limited the search by geography to Texas, USA.  8 hits were retrieved.  Nevertheless, none of the Texas hits were relevant to my query.  Therefore, I returned to the original result list from this search in order to look for the best hit.   

The best hit was the first article, Studies Reveals Gaps in Grad Rates.  This is the same article that I found using the advanced search interface in my previous search.  I should note that I looked for my best hit from my first search and found it on page two of this result list.  I believe that the differences in the two result lists are due to the date range limitation that I was able to employ in the Advanced Search but not Search the News search.           

What I learned: Searching

The content of this database can be easily searched using either natural language or its controlled vocabulary.  This database has 5 search interfaces.  The Basic Search interface will default to searching the entire database which results in a very large number of hits.  This search interface can be employed by a user who is unfamiliar with a topic and is therefore looking for high recall, low precision. The Search The News, Look up a Legal Case and Get Company Info interfaces limit the search to a predetermine set of relevant sources for each category.  For instance, the Search the News interface allows the user to search for news articles; unfortunately it does not provide the user with a variety of limiters prior to the search.  These three search interfaces lead the user to a high recall, low precision result list which the user must then refine using the available limiters on the left side of the webpage.  The most flexible search interface is the advance search interface.  This interface allows the user to select the source, date range, and content type.  It also allows the user to build their search statement employing Boolean and proximity operators.  Additionally, this interface contains the database thesaurus.  I believe that this is the most versatile interface since it can be adjusted to search in the same predetermine set of relevant sources as the Search The News, Look up a Legal Case or Get Company Info interfaces, and it allows the user to employ a number of limiters prior to the search.        

Reflection:

LexisNexis is a reliable database; that supports four different types of search interfaces: Basic keyword search, Advanced Search Options, Search the News, Look up a Legal Case and Get Company Info.  Additionally, a user can browse the hot topics that are trending at the time of their visit to the site.   In addition, to features which help the user to set limiters, this database has a feature that allows the user to control for duplicate items.  It makes sense to have this feature in this database because it locates items from a large number of sources and sometime authors publish their products in a number of different sources.  This database also facilitates several output formats: print, e-mail, download document, copy document link, and send to cloud.  In addition, this database does have a help icon.  This icon has an embedded hyperlink which leads users to the LexisNexis support site. The Support Site contains ‘how to” user guides and a customer support line which is available 24/7 at 1-800-543-6862.  That said this is not a naïve user friendly database.  Although searches in this database default to a natural language feature, this database does not help the user to create a Boolean search.  This database only offers one search box in which the user can place their search term(s).  In order to be successful the user must know how to create a Boolean statement within this search box.  Another undesirable function of LexisNexis is its application of the terms AND, OR and NOT.  These terms are interpreted as Boolean operators whether they are in uppercase or lowercase. Unfortunately this means that the search engine will not handle unintended Boolean operators literally so phrases with these terms will most likely return poor results.  In addition, the only in-depth function that is supported by this database is the proximity operators search protocol.  Although this is a great feature, it is a feature that is most likely only used by an experienced/ trained user.  Additionally, this database does not have an automatic spell check feature.  Therefore, if the user commits a typographical error, the database defaults to a “no documents found” error message, rather than assisting the user. 

I think that with more practice this is a valuable database.  However, its search features can use an upgrade.  I believe that all databases should have an automatic spell check program.  I also believe that LexisNexis should have more search protocol available given that it is geared towards more experienced searcher.  That said I think that its content is unique and therefore it is a database worth exploring.       

 

 

Reference List:

1. “About LexisNexis.” LexisNexis. accessed October 21, 2014. http://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/about-us/about-us.page.

2. “Databases A-Z List.” Texas Woman’s University. accessed October 21, 2014. http://twu.edu/library/databases.asp.  

3. Samuels, Christina A. "Graduation Disparities Loom Large for Students With Special Needs." Education Week, Bethesda, Md. February 4, 2014 Tuesday . Date Accessed: 2014/10/21. www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic.

4. Samuels, Christina A. "Study Reveals Gaps in Grad. Rates." Education Week, Bethesda, Md. May 22, 2013 Wednesday . Date Accessed: 2014/10/21. www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic.