LEXIS-NEXIS
Description of publication
For information on LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc., contact them via e-mail at j.rigg@elsevier.co.uk, or call: (914) 524-9200 or go to an on-line vendor, such as CompuServe or America Online. The address is: http://www.lexis-nexis.com.
For those who remember, and there are many who don't, gathering what is called secondary research data, the stuff somebody else has published and the library is filled with, was usually an arduous task. You had to scour the library; write the government, some corporation, trade association, or otherwise, and often wait several weeks for the reply. "We're sorry, Mr. Jones will be out of the office until next year." Today, of course, that drudgery is over and on-line databases are available by the thousands in every category one can possibly think of, with certainly more to come.
Databases can be classified as either referral, which simply point to other databases, or source, which generally contain full-text original source data. Subcategories include numeric, bibliographic, full-text, and directory. The advantages of the databases should be obvious: quick access to a large variety of information, lower costs (fewer people needed to stock the bookshelves now), and the little companies get access to the same information the big guys get. Disadvantages are also easy to see-you have to know how to conduct a search. If your dog, for example, has hinted for a quick piece on fleas, you may be courting trouble by searching for "flea." You could end up with a lot of "flea-market" entries. The story goes that one novice researcher working for a famous advertising agency in New York inadvertently punched in a command to call up all stories on one particular topic in their entirety. Once placed, the instructions could not be canceled. The result was a $700 bill for data and telephone lines. Another problem is that if the databases aren't kept up-to-date you may still have to go to the local library anyway. Finally, as you can gather from the story above, searching may prove to be an expensive affair.
At this writing, the LEXIS-NEXIS services, perhaps the world's premier on-line legal, news, and business information services, provide support to customers in more than 60 countries. More than 780,000 active users subscribe to the LEXIS-NEXIS services. There are 6,900 databases between the two services. Just to give you an idea how these guys sell more data than McDonald's does burgers, LEXIS-NEXIS adds 9.5 million documents each week to the more than 1 billion documents on-line. In comparison, the Internet's World Wide Web is estimated to add 300,000 documents each week to a total of between 11 million and 16 million documents currently available on the Web.
The LEXIS-NEXIS service offers three different options of searching for information: FREESTYLE, Boolean, and Easy Search. The FREESTYLE feature is the first plain-English search feature that allows the user to search both legal and nonlegal materials all on one commercial database. Experienced searchers most often select the traditional Boolean search option for precision searching. The Easy Search feature, on the other hand, uses on-line menus and screen prompts to assist novice users in formulating precise search requests and then selects parts of the database to search for the user.
The LEXIS service contains major archives of federal and state case law, continuously updated laws of all 50 states, state and federal regulations, and public records from major U.S. states. The LEXIS service has 41 specialized libraries covering all major fields of practice, including tax, securities, banking, environmental, energy, and international. If, for example, you wanted to do research in accounting, you can, with a single research strategy, have access to federal and state tax information, accounting technical literature and guidelines, financial reports, trade publications, and news. Because the information is on-line, it is updated as changes occur. No more time is wasted wading through a CD-ROM library whose contents are likely to be incomplete and out of date. According to the folks at LEXIS-NEXIS, you'll be surprised how economical on-line researching can be. They offer to help companies control their research costs at economical fixed rates that fit the firm's size and research volume. Rates change and so do services, so if you are trying to work out a program for your own individual research needs, give them a call at (800) 356-6548 and see what they can do for you.
The NEXIS service is a leading news and business information service that contains more than 7,100 sources, of which 3,700 provide their entire publications on-line. These include regional, national, and international newspapers, news wires, magazines, trade journals; and business publications.
The NEXIS service is the exclusive archival source for The New York Times in the legal, business, and other professional markets. The NEXIS service also offers several thousand other news sources including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, BusinessWeek, Fortune, and The Economist. It is a one-stop service for both national network and regional television broadcast transcripts, in addition to carrying CNN and National Public Radio news and features. Major news services of China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the unified Russian republics, and the United States are vital sources of international business information and news. In addition, the NEXIS service contains more than 2,000 sources of abstracts including The Wall Street Journal.
NEXIS also has "Market Library" which focuses on marketing and industry news by specific industry. Topics included are banks, business and finance, computers and communications, energy, entertainment, and environment. There are many other LEXIS-NEXIS features (EdgarPlus, ECLIPSE, FOCUS, etc.) not mentioned here because of the length of descriptions. One service, however, is important to mention because it can be used by nonsubscribers. NEXIS EXPRESS can check citations and find cases or information from the LEXIS legal libraries and the NEXIS business and news libraries. Payment can be made using major credit cards; and documents will be sent via fax, e-mail, overnight or first-class mail. Call: (800) 843-6476 for service.
A second popular database (among many) that you should be familiar with is Dialog. For information on this Knight-Ridder database, go to your on-line vendor (America Online, CompuServe, etc.). The address is www.dialog.com.
Dialog is one of the larger, most diversified vendors of on-line services. Dialog Information Retrieval Service offers more than 450 databases, approximately two-thirds of which have direct business applications. Dialog's business information runs the gamut from company directories, financial services, and statistical files, to news wires, periodical indexes, and full-text files of newspapers, journals, and newsletters. With few exceptions, business databases are somewhat expensive to access, regardless of the type of system on which they reside. Government-produced databases, however, offer more reasonably priced alternatives, even when found on commercial systems. Products from government agencies include bibliographic files, numeric databases, and electronic directories. For example, the complete text of the U.S. Commerce Department's Commerce Business Daily can be searched on Dialog and several other vendors. On-line systems remain the most heavily used electronic sources for business searching, but they are by no means the only medium at the researcher's disposal. Important business databases can be found with increasing frequency on CD-ROMs (see SIRS in "Commentary") and diskettes for microcomputers.
CompuServe Information Service is one of the largest consumer vendors (according to the Directory of Business Information). Over the years it has gradually added more business and financial databases. Current databases include business and financial news (Reuter Financial Report), corporate news releases (Business Wire), investment statistics (Compustat, Standard & Poor's), small business (Small Business Reports), and more.
CompuServe Information Service-Knowledge Index was formerly an off-peak-hours database offered by Dialog. It is now cosponsored by Dialog and Compuserve. Knowledge Index is one of Compuserve's gateway services; the files are still kept at the Dialog computer. There is (at this publishing date) a charge of $24 per hour to search the database, and there is an additional charge for downloading information. Knowledge Index includes many databases in addition to the standard Compuserve business databases: ABI/Inform; Academic Index; Business Software Index; Consumer Reports; Economic Literature Index; GPO Publications Reference File; Harvard Business Review Online; Standard & Poor's Corporate Descriptions; Standard & Poor's Daily News, and more.
Another business database that is often suggested by librarians is Edgar Database of Corporation Information at www.sec.gov.
You may have heard of the ABI/Inform database because of its value to professionals in all business and management disciplines. It is, according to its editors, a comprehensive source of ideas, concepts, and tested methods in business and management decision making.
ABI/Inform covers business and management periodicals from over 585 journals and provides long, informative summaries of articles. Eighty percent of the journals are published in the United States. Emphasis is placed on cover-to-cover inclusion of some 300 of these 585 journals. All articles are abstracted with the exception of news sections, letters to the editor, book reviews, and similar regular features or columns. The remaining journals are mentioned selectively. ABI/Inform is updated monthly with approximately 35,000 citations a year. Call Data Courier Inc. at (502) 583-4111, if you would like more information.
Something to Think About
The LEXIS-NEXIS service offers three different options of searching for information. Do you know what they are? How many countries are serviced by LEXIS-NEXIS? In comparing LEXIS-NEXIS and the Internet's World Wide Web, which do you think adds the most documents each week?
General software sources would not usually have a place in this text; however, so much of the business publications environment is made up of software, there is one reference publication that should not be overlooked. The Software Encyclopedia from R.R. Bowker at (908) 665-6770, provides comprehensive and detailed information on microcomputer software. The 11th edition contains 50,000 software titles from 3,000 publishers, including 16,671 unique titles. All software is classified under one or more of the 580 subject headings or applications, which are grouped under 38 major headings. Each title entry contains title, version number, publication date, compatible hardware, operating system requirements, memory required, price, a description of the type of customer support available, package extras (i.e., manuals, etc.) and author if it differs from the publisher, when provided.
The Software Encyclopedia is simply organized. Volume 1 contains the "Title Index," an alphabetical listing by title of all software, and the "Publisher/Title Index," an alphabetical listing of all publishers with full address and telephone, as well as a listing of their titles. Volume 2 contains the "System Compatibility/Applications Index," which provides software organized by system, subject/application heading, and titles.
www.lexis-nexis.com.
j.rigg@elsevier.co.uk
Database: Lexis-Nexis
LEXIS-NEXIS
For more information, call
LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Phone: (914) 524-9200