Some "Tried 'n True" Resources are Worth Remembering
By Danielle Francis
As a LexisNexis® Librarian Relations Consultant (LRC), I have the pleasure, along with my fellow LRCs, of showing librarians new and enhanced features and content available through lexis.com®. And while this new content is great, today I want to take a moment to remind you of some “oldies but goodies” when it comes to research:
RDS TableBase
When the information you are searching for is most likely to be found in a table
or chart included in a news/journal article, then TableBase is the place to start. It specializes exclusively in tabular data on companies, industries, products and demographics.
RDS’s precision indexing and unique table titles make it simple to find the information you need. TableBase is indexed for topics such as market share, company and brand rankings, industry and product forecasts, production and consumption statistics, imports and exports, usage and capacity, number of users/outlets, trends
and much more. Some of the more than 1,000 publications covered by TableBase include American Banker, Business Week, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal.
To get a full list of publications, segments for searching and special index terms
in the online source description, click the 
icon next to RDS TableBase on the
lexis.com menu screen.
Relevancy Searches
Retrieving too many hits about a company in your news search? Do many of them just mention the company because of their recent earnings call? How can you make your cite list better and a more manageable size when you have already used the COMPANY segment?
Use LexisNexis SmartIndexing Technology™ to add relevancy scores to your search request. For example, your original search is *ENTER: company(abc doughnut). Now try this: company(abc doughnut #90plus#).
You will only retrieve news articles about your company that are 90% or more relevant to your company. You can also use other percentages such as 80, 85 or 95.
Want to capture several name variations or related companies? Use the PRE/n connector. For example, ENTER: company(GE pre/3 #90plus#).
This search will find GE Asset Management, GE Reinsurance Corp and GE Supply Company.
Want to know more about LexisNexis SmartIndexing Technology, go to the LexisNexis InfoPro Web site. Click the Research Tools for Librarians box and choose How to Use SmartIndexing. There’s even an Advanced Searching section that offers examples of relevancy searches. Find it at http://www.lexisnexis.com/infopro/smartindexing/advancedsearch.asp
ZIP Demographic Reports
Find these easily through LexisNexis® Total Litigator (under the Gather Intelligence Tab) or at lexis.com (News & Business > Market & Industry > Geo - Demographics > ZIP Demographics). Have a jury trial? Need to know the demographics of a jury pool? You can search by zip code or county name to retrieve a full report based on Census data.Find out about:
- home values,
- income levels,
- population ethnic background, age, gender, occupation,
- industries of employment,
- households with a married couple, children and/or a single parent,
- how long people commute to work.
Even group living is described, including educational dormitories, prisons, barracks and nursing homes. Reports give you the data for current year on file (2006), five-year historical data (2001), and a five-year future projection (2011). And, even though the data is based on Census records, it is updated annually, using more than 1,600 local government and private sources.
So even though your LRC loves to show you what is new and different at lexis.com, we can also offer some great tips on sources that have been an integral part of our research system for years. Please do not hesitate to ask us for assistance with all your research tasks.
*fictitious company name; used for illustration only
