The Library is pleased to announce that a new version of one of the most popular full-text educational tools has now become available over the Web, as of January 1, 1998. Academic UNIVerse, formerly Lexis/Nexis, offers some distinctive new features:
Academic UNIVerse is a new, easy-to-manage Web interface to most of Lexis/Nexis,
the world's largest full-text database with more than a billion documents. A source
for current events, international news, government, legal, and business information,
Lexis/Nexis also includes country studies, biographical resources, financial information,
law reviews, and country and state profiles. It even contains reference tools, such
as Books in Print, Ulrich's International Periodical Directory, Eventline, and the
Encyclopedia of Associations among others. Transcripts of television and radio broadcasts,
trade journals, and wire services reports also help to provide a more complete picture
of the news of the world. A printed list of the titles in Lexis/Nexis, indicating
which are part of Academic UNIVerse, is available at the Rockefeller and Sciences
Reference Desks.
The new Web interface of UNIVerse features not only wider, easier access for multiple users, previously limited to three by appointment, but also eliminates the need for a training session to learn how to manage the complex database interface. In addition, users can also now print documents, as well as email them or save them to a disk by using the capabilities of a Web browser such as Netscape. Academic UNIVerse may still be searched using commands from the previous version, including boolean connectors such as "and" or "or", as well as proximity operators like "w/n", which searches for terms within a certain specified number of words of each other. The Web template provides lists of choices for limiting searches to a particular time period. It is also still possible to limit to a certain segment or field of the records so that only a specific publication or only headlines or lead paragraphs will be searched, for example.
Sociology Professor David Meyer has directed his students in Urban Studies 187 on Downtown Development and in Sociology 117 on Corporations and Global Cities to Lexis/Nexis in the past, and now to Academic UNIVerse. He feels that the wide range of sources in the database provides his students with an array of choices of topics to explore in their assignments, which are designed to apply theoretical ideas in the interpretation and analysis of evidence. Such resources, he observed, contribute "so much to the learning process. It makes students active learners rather than passive readers...." They can "explore ideas at the frontiers of knowledge," often in sources the Library did not previously hold, and must be able to evaluate them and select those that are authoritative.
Access is possible from any networked workstation at Brown (including dormitories
and offices), and even remotely, if the user goes through the Brown modem pool and
has a Net ID and password. A user outside the Library should go to the Library homepage
under the Electronic Resources section. Go to the listing for Lexis/Nexis UNIVerse
and click on the name. Note that the "More info" page has a link to a site
that provides a list of sources included. It is also possible to login to:
http://www.lexis-nexis.com/universe
This new version of Lexis/Nexis is available for Brown University faculty, staff, and currently-enrolled students only. The license agreement stipulates that use by others is not permitted. We ask that you please respect the terms of our license agreement.
--Florence K. Doksansky and Anne Cerstvik Nolan
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