We live in interesting times. While information professionals are expected to conduct more complex searching, and to search both the proprietary online services and the open Web, online vendors are focusing on developing user interfaces that are intuitive and streamlined enough to roll out enterprise-wide. As LEXIS-NEXIS migrated from its proprietary software to a Web-based interface, it opted for nexis.com, a replacement for LEXIS-NEXIS Universe, LEXIS-NEXIS' earlier Web-based front-end. The new product has several interesting features. SmartIndexing. LEXIS-NEXIS uses automatic indexing to identify key subject terms, company and personal names, and geographic locations, and to assign those terms to each document. What's intriguing is that the SmartIndexing technology also calculates whether this is a passing reference or the main focus, and assigns a relevance percentage. By combining a relevance score with the search term, you can limit the search to items that are primarily about a certain topic. While automated indexing still needs work, I like the ability to limit the search to high-relevancy terms only. Running a simple search directly from the initial nexis.com page. Note that this is definitely designed for the casual searcher. You aren't searching the full text of documents--only the SmartIndexing terms, title, and lead paragraph. Although not clear from the initial search screen, your search is limited to the last seven days' worth of news articles and Web sites, and the past two years' records from company and legislative sources. If you want to expand the date range of your search, select the Power Search option. Partial Web site indexing. LEXIS-NEXIS identifies URLs in articles and creates a bibliographic record for each referenced site. The Web site is downloaded and SmartIndexing is applied to the text.
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