Search out new media—graphs, tweets and more—without overhauling your searching skills (Q1 2011)
By Bridget MacMillan
Search out new media—graphs, tweets and more—without overhauling your searching skills
by Bridget MacMillan, LexisNexis® Senior Librarian Relations Consultant
There is comfort in that which is familiar to us. Searching with the LexisNexis® services is an activity that is incredibly comfortable for me; selecting a source, constructing the search, and evaluating the results. Until recently, most results were available only in plain text. But that has changed! If you are like me, some of these exciting changes may have gone unnoticed. As the presentation of information becomes more sophisticated with the addition of images, photos and videos, and the distribution becomes more varied as evidenced by blogs and Twitter® feeds, our search strategies must evolve to ensure that no outlet or type of information is overlooked. But it’s great to know that LexisNexis is accumulating these new and different sources—and allowing me to use search skills I’m comfortable with within these new sources.
It adds up to great benefits:
• Save time searching in one location;
• Save time using familiar skills; and
• Be confident in the authoritative results you find at nexis.com®.
Now at nexis.com:
Harvard Business Review® (HBR) Graphs and Images
Images from this source are now available at nexis.com. When I worked at Ernst & Young, consultants requested copies of HBR articles daily. Finding the text of the article was easy because it was available from many sources. But the graphs and images, which were key to conveying the essence of the articles, were not easily found. At nexis.com, you can retrieve the complete article—including graphs and images. For example, in the December 2010 issue, an article titled “I Can Make Your Brain Look Like Mine,” by Uri Hasson, contains graphs. The article with graphs looks like this at nexis.com:
(Click here to see the screen shot within the PDF.)
Photos at nexis.com … and yes you can search with words!
You may not think of the LexisNexis services first for photos, but nexis.com offers many resources with photos and images. The benefit of using nexis.com to retrieve them is that you can use search words and commands to find an image. In many instances, this will save you a great deal of time as compared to searching on the open Web. Another benefit is that if you need copyright permission for the image, nexis.com offers a link to a copyright permission website where you can easily locate the information for securing copyright permission.
(Click here to see the screen shots within the PDF.)
To find photos at nexis.com, just select the Find Sources tab and search for “photos.”
From the results below, you’ll see many choices. For example, I am interested in finding action shots of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team. I select McClatchy-Tribune Photo Service and search. From the cite list, I select the first result. You can see the picture in a thumbnail size. You can click on it to enlarge it to its full size. You also see the link on this page to the copyright permission.
Twitter Feeds
The LexisNexis services offer more than 200 Twitter feeds. These are provided by Newstex® and can be found in the various Newstex sources. Many of these resources are the Twitter accounts of elected officials and government agencies. Twitter feeds are recognized as sources of breaking news. Searching them via nexis.com allows you to use LexisNexis precision-searching features like FOCUS™ and automatic updating features like LexisNexis® Alerts.
In this example, I am looking for mentions of “groupon” in Twitter feeds. First I limit my Newstex Blogs results to tweets: I search for “newstwits,” a term which appears in all tweets delivered by Newstex, i.e., ENTER: newstwits AND date aft 11/15/2010
When searching Twitter feeds, it is important to remember that there is not much information connected to each tweet, and your search strategy needs to reflect that. An effective approach is to use one or two key words, and then use the FOCUS feature with a date limiter or additional search term. For example, for my search, I added a FOCUS term. ENTER: groupon (I enjoy the challenge of searching in these sources knowing that my word selection is so critical to the success of the search.)
Newstex Video on Demand
(Click here to see the screen shots within the PDF.)
The LexisNexis services may not be the first place you think of when you are looking for video, but I hope to change that! With video provided by Newstex, nexis.com may become your go-to place for video searching because you can search using LexisNexis commands and features like the FOCUS feature. That may save you time and effort when compared to sifting through results on the open Web. Newstex Video on Demand is an authoritative news source; it’s not entertainment videos. Find powerful ways to present news and information in ways different from the written word.
To demonstrate, I searched for “groupons” in the Newstex Video on Demand source. I opened a document in FULL, and there was a link to view the video. I clicked on the View Video link, and a Web page launched with the video feed. Very cool!
