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.

DELIVERY METHODSPrinting, emailing, downloading, Kindle

Your options

Type in email addressand choose the format

you prefer.

Layout options

Print layout options

Download options

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)