Introduction to LexisNexis
Intro
- LexisNexis (http://www.lexisnexis.com)
is one of the premier suppliers of online legal, business, news,
and public record information.
- The company has entered most of
the major information markets in the world with databases
incorporating local legal, regulatory, statute, and news
information.
The Briefest
History
- The Lexis and LexisNexis
databases were created by Mead Data Central, which was a merger of
Data Corporation and Mead Corporation.
- Mead Data debuted the Lexis
legal information service in 1973 and LexisNexis in 1974. The
early product was accessed mainly by dedicated "UBIQ" terminals,
which LexisNexis supplied to the law libraries that subscribed to
LexisNexis.
- Mead Data was acquired in 1994
by Reed-Elsevier, which is one of the five largest publishing
conglomerates in the world. Reed-Elsevier renamed Mead Data
LexisNexis.
- A history of Mead Data and
LexisNexis, "Online Before the Internet, Part 6: Mead Data Central
and the Genesis of Nexis" by Susanne Bjørner is online at
the Information Today Web site at: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr04/ardito_bjorner.shtml
Products
- LexisNexis has a wide range of
information products. A list of them (with links) is at
http://www.lexisnexis.com/productsandservices/.
- Examples of the major
database products:
- LexisNexis Academic -
The primary database product, with over 5,600 periodicals
covering legal, business, news, and medical fields.
- Company Dossier -
Information on over 13 million companies.
- LexisNexis Congressional
- A wide range of government documents and
sources.
- LexisNexis Country
Analysis - Business information on and from 190 countries
and 157 industries.
- LexisNexis Government
Periodicals Index - A database of a wide range of U.S.
government periodicals.
- LexisNexis Municipal
Codes
- LexisNexis Primary
Sources in History
- LexisNexis Scholastic
Edition - A database intended for high school
students.
- LexisNexis State Capital
- A database of documents of and related to individual
states, including legislation, statutes, regulations, state
constitutions, and news.
- LexisNexis Statistical
- Statistics from federal agencies, states, and
intergovernmental organizations
Size
Talking to Judi Schultz,
Sr. Public Relations Manager, in October 2004, I learned the
following data:
- The LexisNexis is a union
database of about 19,500 individual databases. These, though, are
not large aggregate databases but, mostly, databases of individual
publications or limited groups of publications from one
publisher.
- There are about 33,000
different information sources ranging from periodicals to
government and court documents.
- There are about
several
billion documents in
total in the database.
- LexisNexis adds about 54
million documents a month.
Types of
Searching - Introduction
- While generally we think of
LexisNexis as a source of legal information, the range of
business, news, government, legal, and other information has made
the company a prime tool for research on a broad range of
subjects.
- The database(s) also provide a
full range of sophisticated search functions.
Types of
Searching - Legal
In this class, though, we
will be focusing on legal research. There are a few major
types:
- Searching for citations -
There are two aspects to finding citations.
- You have a case citation
number and want to find it.
- You want to find citations
of subsequent cases to one or more previous cases.
- Searching for a case by name
- You can easily find a case by the name or names of the
people involved in the case.
- Searching for information on
a particular subject - You do this when you need to find cases
and articles on a particular area of law.