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NOTEBOOK - NOTE #A16: ACADEMIC UNIVERSE and Congressional
Universe
Academic Universe and Congressional
Universe from Lexis-Nexis™
Academic Universe is a large
collection of databases from a single aggregator vendor. It is
especially useful for finding topical news articles from through the
world, business news and company financial information, legal
information and court rulings, indexes to medical information and
some general reference materials (country profiles, public opinion
surveys, etc.).
Congressional Universe is another
collection of databases devoted to the legal process, laws,
regulations, members of Congress and topical issues.
On the Periodical Indexes and Other
Databases page for on-campus users, you may go to the main page for
Academic Universe or you may go directly to the general subset you
need, e.g. general news, U.S. news, medical, state courts, etc. When
you select Congressional Universe, you go to the main page and make
your subset selection there. When off-campus you will go to a page
where you start your search by selecting either Academic Universe or
Congressional Universe and continue from there. Passwords are
required.
Both use similar interfaces and have
similar search capabilities. Within most of the search screens, you
have several choices in limiting and refining your search.
Some of the limits are: Source (particular subsets of publications),
Date or time frame (today, this week, past six months ... all
available dates), types of articles or general subject category,
court types, etc. These are available in drop down menus
indicated by a button beside the form field.
Lexis-Nexis™ provides a 'How
Do I..." page with suggestions on finding particular kinds of
information --- which Academic Universe database to use and which
features to select. A similar
page for Congressional Universe provides suggestions for finding
information on the US Congress, the legislative process, bill
histories and government regulations.
See the Reference Librarians with your
questions. |