Nexis Uni: Introduction
Begin Transcript
Visual: Nexis Uni search page in the Walden Library
Narration: Hello! My name is Hadeer Elsbai, and I’m a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Walden.
In this short video, I’m going to briefly introduce you to the Nexis Uni database. Nexis Uni is primarily used for legal and business research. It contains all three kinds of laws—statutory, regulatory, and case law—as well law reviews and journals, case notes and briefs, news articles, company information, and more.
This is the homepage of Nexis Uni. There are a couple ways to start your search in this database.
You can start with the search box at the top of the page. This box will recognize both natural language, and searches using connectors.
For example, we can type:
what are liquor license laws in Minnesota?
We can also type:
liquor license and laws and Minnesota
To the right of the search box you have two drop down menus. The first dropdown menu defaults to the last two years. If you want to broaden your search, click on that, and select your date range.
The second drop-down menu defaults to all content types. Here you can narrow your search by news, companies, legal information, or even specific individuals.
Let us click on Legal.
Visual: drop down box for all content types and subsequent options
Narration: And then, we can specify that we want US legislation. And then narrow it down to State by clicking Minnesota.
Now let’s hit search.
Visual: search results page
Narration: So we have 43 liquor license laws from Minnesota that were enacted within the past two years.
On the left side of the screen, you have additional options to focus your search.
There is a snapshot at the top of the page that tells you how many of your results are law reviews, are statutes and legislations, administrative materials and other resources.
Visual: scroll down on results page for options on the left side.
Narration: You can scroll down and add additional search terms, narrow down by category, jurisdiction, sources., or practice areas and topics.
To get back to the main search page, click on the Nexis Uni logo in the top left corner of your screen.
Visual: Nexis Uni homepage in Walden Library
Narration: Now let’s try a search using the guided search option. This is a great place to start if you are not sure where to look. It will walk you through your search by asking you a series of questions.
You can choose what you are looking for. Is it news, company information, specific case or law.
Visual: Guided Search box, starts by clicking on: Cases.
Narration: If we choose Cases, we will then be asked the jurisdiction, federal or state. If you choose State, you will be asked for state name. Let’s again put in: Minnesota
Next we can type in our keywords
I am going to type in: liquor license. I am going to leave the Date section on: all dates
Now let’s hit search.
Visual: search results page.
Narration: I get about 530 results.
Visual: scrolls down to locate limiters on left side.
Narration: I can narrow these results by using the limiters on the left side of the screen. Most are the same as our first search, however, we have a few additional options here, such as limiting by court, attorney, law firm and even presiding judge.
Visual: scrolls up to top of results list.
Narration: From the results list I can read a brief overview of the case. If I want to find out more, I can click on the Preview button to the right of that result.
Visual: clicks on title of second result
Narration: If we go into one of our results by clicking on the title,
you’re going to see an option to export your citation.
Visual: clicked on: export citation
Narration: When you click on that you can easily copy and paste the citation into your list of works cited.
Visual: exits export citation feature and returns to document view
Narration: You can also see where it highlights your search terms in the content of the document.
You can also search within the document using the search bar on the top right.
Visual: hover cursor over options above document
Narration: This is also where you will find different options on how you can save results. You can email it, you can download it, or even save it to Google Drive or One Drive
Thank you for joining me on this short introduction to using the Nexis Uni database. Remember if you have any questions, you can always use the Ask A Librarian button that’s at the top right corner of every page of the Walden Library. We are here to help you with all of your searches.
Thank you.
Created June 2022 by Walden University Library