LexisNexis results

I did not find any useful results in LexisNexis, and it was my most frustrating search process so far. However, although I did not learn anything about web design from this effort I did learn some lessons about searching. It was good to have a database that did not immediately return useful results because it forced me to investigate many different angles for using the database, from searching with search results to consulting the index to searching specialized subsets of LexisNexis's records. This is a rare experience for an experienced searcher and I was useful practice.

I think that this search was also a lesson in choosing your databases carefully. Because this was an assignment I had to search LexisNexis for my project, but if this were an ordinary search I should have been able to see from the home page and documentation that LexisNexis was not the best database for me to use if I wanted information about web design. It is a useful reminder that the search starts as soon as you start to formulate a strategy, not just when you are on the landing page of a database deciding what to type in to the search box.

LexisNexis search part 4

I was starting to get some promising-looking results from my most recent search, but there were too many and too many false positives. I thought I could search within my results to narrow them down. I first searched for 'integrate' as what I am interested in is organizations integrating user-generated content into their websites. This left nine results, several of which initially looked promising:
 
 Unfortunately, these news articles were too basic and trivial to provide much information, so I returned to my large pool of results and tried searching within them for "website" instead. However, that search returned only two results, both of which were included in the nine results from "integrate."

I thought that using limiters to filter the results might me more effective, so I took a list at the subjects listed:

Apparently, this list includes the subjects attached to every single record included in the results. It took me a while to scroll through them, but I found a couple promising categories: intellectual property, company activities & management, science & technology, experimentation & research,
Intellectual property--looks like it's all records of patents and trademarks
company activities & management--several promisingly-titled hits turned out not to be relevant on further investigation
Science & technology--Some related material but nothing directly relevant
Experimentation & research--All results were articles previously investigated above

I know that intent of the search blog is to locate at least one useful result in every database searched, but I am reluctantly concluding that either LexisNexis does not contain anything substantive on the topic of web design or I am simply unable to find it.

LexisNexis search part 3

This time I thought I would try the advanced search interface. Maybe I am using bad search terms and I can find better ones using controlled vocabulary. Accordingly, I used the Advanced Search "look up index terms" function to see what I should be using. I did a search for terms including "website" and these are my results:

It looks like web design is not a topic on which LexisNexis has much information. However, I am interested in how organization websites can incorporate user generated content (for example by putting patron reviews or tags into an OPAC), so I thought I would do a search to see what kind of materials the database has on that, even though I don't really know what "Industry Results" are.
Here is my new search:

This returns 999 hits. The results are somewhat promising, but some are too old or too obscure.

First I went back and edited my search to only include results that are less than five years old, as this is a rapidly-evolving topic. However, this did not cut down on the number of results. Apparently it actually returns >1,000 hits, as the last search must have also, because I got this message:

In part 4 we'll see if we can search within these results to glean something useful.