Academic Help: Advanced Search

About Power Search

Updated design of the Power Search form, September 2009.

Index Terms

Use this tool to open the SmartIndexing Term Lookup Tool to help you locate and index terms to your search. For more information on using index terms to improve your search results, see the article on SmartIndexing.

Select Source

The Power Search form offers three different methods for choosing a source. Select a group source such as "Major World Publications" or "All News" to conduct a broad search. Type in the title of a specific publication to search it (note this option is limited to newspaper and periodical titles). Or use the links provided to open the source directory and choose from among all of the thousands of sources available in LexisNexis Academic. For more information on choosing sources, see the article on the Academic Source Directory.

Section Search

The section search tool displays the "sections" or fields that are available in the LexisNexis source you have selected. Limiting your search to a specific field can greatly improve your results. To use the tool, pick a section from the drop down, enter your search term(s) in the box, and click the "Add to Search" button. The tool will build a section search string and place it to the "Search Terms" box. If there is already a search string in the "Search Terms" box, the section search string will be appended with an AND connector. You can repeat this process for multiple sections and search terms. When entering the terms for the section search, the usual rules for Boolean searching apply. For more information, see the article on Academic Document Sections