Thursday, September 17, 2009

New Zealand law review

We've had a bit of a run on the New Zealand Law Review recently. It's available in print (K211 N355) or online. There are a couple of quirky things about the lexis.com online version, which have caught a few people out.


1. getting to lexis.com. The simplest way is via the library catalogue - search by title, select the 1995 "electronic resource" record, then follow the link. You can also get there via the Law Subject Guide, but remember that you'll find it in Lexis and not in LexisNexis NZ- doesn't make a lot of sense but that's how it is.


2. navigating your way through lexis.com. It's vast, and US-centric. From the front page, scroll down to the Find laws by country or region section - you're looking for New Zealand, which you'll find via the View more sources link. Once you're in the New Zealand section you should be able to see the New Zealand Law Review link.


3. using the search template.

Try an Easy Search. It's a full-text search, so use distinctive but simple terms, like a combination of author (surname only is the most reliable option) and title keywords.

Or try the Terms and Connectors search. Segment searching allows you to specify where (in the document) you want your search terms to appear. Useful for author and title. And you can use the CITE segment to find a specific article (e.g 2005 NZ Law Review 1); or to find all articles published in a particular volume (e.g. 2005 NZ Law Review) effectively giving you a table of contents for that volume.

You get some examples of segment searching via the information icon (i-in-a-box) next to the journal title in the breadcrumb trail.

4. One more thing. You'll only find articles if they are there. Some aren't - looks like they've missed a few issues here & there.

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