WestlawNext for News
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Transcript of WestlawNext for News
WESTLAWNEXTTutorial for News Searching
Westlaw provides 24/7 research assistance.
You can search any of these news areas individually, in combination, or all at once.
Note that while Reuters is a news source, its focus is mainly business and finance.
SEARCHING ALL NEWS
Let’s start with searching all of the News content.
This is a very broad search and is mainly
intended to give you a feel for
WestlawNext’s interface.
Note the U.S. and non-U.S.
news sources.
Let’s go backto the main
News screen to make our search more
specific.
U.S. NEWS SOURCES
Let’s search only U.S. news sources.
Slightly differentset of search
results;U.S. news
sources only
NEWS BY TYPE
In WestlawNext, you can specify news content to search, for up to 3 categories.
For example, let’s do this same search with blogs, journals, magazines, newsletters and newspapers. These are our 3
categories.
Note: these are NOT limited to U.S. news sources only.
International news sources are included in these different news types.
U.S. newspaper
U.K. newspaper
U.S. newswire
Germannewswire
Displaying searchresults in
“Relevance” order
Results will be limited to U.S. and international blogs, newspapers,
newsletters, journals andmagazines.
Sorting resultsby “Date” order
produces significantly
different results.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Let’s do an international news search on therecent National Security Agency’s spy scandal.
We are sticking with a basic search for now.
NEWS BY TOPIC
You can restrict your set of news results bytopic. For example, for the most
recent news articles on the U.S. Supreme Court,select the Legal & Justice topic.
News By Topic searches yield very specific results and differ vastly, depending on the topic. For example,
you generally won’t find computer news by searching the
Energy & Environment topic category.
Your results arelimited to legal
and judicialsources.
You would neverfind this level of Supreme Court
news detail in, for example, the
Arts & Humanitiesnews topic.
Back to the main News screen
So, what happens when we simply
click on one of these news links?
We get the 10 most recently addednews documents for that category (in
this case, Reuters Health eLine).
We don’t control the search resultswhen we do this. It is similar to
reading the day’s headlines.
SEARCHING BY SOURCE
For an alphabetical list of news sources in Westlaw,
click on News Index.
Click on a letter for a list of WestlawNext news sourcesbeginning with that letter.
Alphabetical list of news sources starting with the letter “N”
Let’s take a look at the New York Daily News.
Remember, when we first click on a link to the individualnews source, we are shown the 10 most recent news
entries for that source.
In this case, it is as if we are browsing the June 12th headlines in the NY Daily News.
You can do a basic search of the New York DailyNews from this screen, or choose an advanced search.
Let’s select an advanced search.
ADVANCED SEARCHING
Use an advanced search to:
• limit your search by title, author, date, exact phrase, etc.
or• require certain terms or exclude terms from your
search resultsor
• use Boolean connectors to further refineand focus your search.
Here we are looking for articles in the NY Daily News within the past 6 months that contain the word “lawsuit” and have the words NYPD or
“New York Police Department”and the exact phrase “stop and frisk.”
Note how WestlawNext automaticallyconstructs an advanced Boolean search
inquiry based on the terms you pluginto the advanced search template.
Click the SEARCH button.
From this screenyou have the optionof running another
NY Daily News search or
returning to themain News screen.
Let’s return to the alphabeticallist of news sources to do more searching by specific source(s).
We will return to advanced searching soon.
Select news sources beginning
with the letter “N.”
Remember, this is a list of ALL of the news sourcesbeginning with the letter “N” in WestlawNext.
International news sources are included.
Let’s pick New York News sources.
You can search all of these New York news sources at once orin combination of up to 3.
Let’s select Newsday, the New York Post, and theNew York Times.
Note that in order to run an advanced search, you must either search one content category at a time, or all at once.
Your search results are
limited to articlesfrom Newsday, the
NY Times, andNY Post.
Back to News
Click on any of the states to viewthe news sources from that state.
For example, click on the word“Florida.”
We have searchresults for all
WestlawNext’sFlorida news
sources, in dateorder, on hurricaneseason.
You can run an advanced news search with ALLcontent (e.g. ALL Florida news sources), or with ONE source (e.g.
Florida Times Union).
You cannot run an advanced search in combination with 2 or 3 specific sources, like above. Try it.
This is the screen you will see if you try to run an advanced search with a select group (2 or 3) of
news sources.
You cannot run an advanced search with a select group of sources.
WestlawNext will automatically default to searching ALL news contentin the particular category you are in, in this case, Florida.
ADVANCED SEARCHING
The advanced search screen allows you to search by
Document Field.
More document fields you can searchby, if you know how to!
See next slide for tips on how to identify a document field.
1st ½ of page
1st ½ of page
It’s unlikely you would
know the exact citation
of a news source, but if you
do, you can plug the citation into the Citation field
on the Advanced Search template.
1st ½ of page
If you know the name of the
news source, you can type it in thePublication Name
field. See next slide.
If you know the Name of the newssource, type it inthe Publication
Name field.
Advanced SearchDocument Fields
accept onlyBoolean searching,
sobe sure to use
quotations around an exact phrase.
1st ½ of page
If you know the name ofthe author of the newssource, you can plug
that in the Author field, with quotations (since it
is a phrase).
1st ½ of page
You can search in the Text
field.
2nd ½ of page
The last four fields listed above—Geographic Region, Language, Industry, and News Subject—are examples of reference codes which have been added to
News documents on WestlawNext (by Westlaw editors) to help focus searching.
Using these fields, while not essential, can further refine and limit your search results. See next slides for examples.
Here we are searching all news content(U.S. and international) in the last 12 months
with Eric Clapton in the title.
We are making sure our search results include the Westlaw reference code “entertainment” or
“audio recording” or “music.”
Remember, this is sophisticated, advanced searching!You may not use all of these tools, but they are
available to you.
Let’s search all news sources from June 1 through
June 19, 2013 with the words “Chrysler” and “recall”
and “jeep” in the title.
We retrieve71 news
sources of varying type,
topic and geographic
origin, within this date range,
having these title words.
See how this can change
dramatically by adding a
geographic reference code.
Our results are limited to thegeographic
reference code“Asia,”
specifically Reuters Asia and
the English newswire
Xinhau News Agency
in Asia only.
BOOLEAN SEARCHING
AND, OR, NOT…• Boolean Operators are words (AND, OR, NOT) used to
combine or exclude words in a search, producing more focused results.
• Click HERE for a simple visual explanation of this concept.
Boolean Symbols in WestlawNext
Connectors and Expanders
• & AND• /s In same sentence • Or OR• +s Preceding within sentence• /p In same paragraph• " " Phrase• +p Preceding within paragraph• % But not• /n Within n terms of• ! Root expander• +n Preceding within n terms of• * Universal character
When and how should I use these?
• When: You have a focused search in mind.
• How: Use one, two, or more in combination.
• How: Don’t get overwhelmed with trying to incorporate several connectors or
expanders. • You may actually ELIMINATE useful results
this way!
Westlaw’s advanced
search screen is designed to
simplify Boolean
searching.
In addition to AND & OR, a very commonly used
Boolean connector is used for phrases. The symbol is
“ quotations” around the phrase.
Here we ran an international
news search requiring “Nazi war crimes” to be in the
title and our results to be
from December 19, 2012
to the present.
You can see howspecific we wereable to make our
search with simplequotations and date
limits.
Extensive Boolean Searching…• For detailed WestlawNext search tips on Boolean
searching with exact phrases, simple operators, and more, visit the next 9 slides.
• You can always make an appointment with a librarian for one-on-one help with Boolean searching. Use the individual library instruction request form to make an appointment. Appointments require 24-hour advance notice. You will receive an e-mail confirmation of your appointment. Stop by the reference desk for immediate assistance or use the chat or e-mail options provided on this page.
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YOU CAN DO IT!Ask for help.
HELP!Click icon to add picture
Email, chat or make an appointment with a librarian
,
or
call 1.800.REF.ATTY. (1.800.733.2889)