• Lexis-Nexis
Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe is now joined by two new components, CIS Congressional Universe and CIS Statistical Universe. Among the interface improvements is its new ability to email documents to any valid email address.

Academic Universe contains: Full text articles in over 2,000 magazines, journals, and newspapers; full-text company news & financial information; full-text access to state and federal court cases, laws, regulations, and law review journals; full-text & abstracted medical & health information; and full-text reference materials. New this year is the ability to search all courts at once for a particular case. You now don't need to know where a case was tried in order to find it.

Congressional Universe tracks what the legislative branch of the federal government is busy doing. Track current legislation or research legislative history back to 1970. Track how your favorite legislators vote. Retrieve full- text congressional committee hearings. Search CongressDaily and the National Journal for today's news inside the beltway.

Statistical Universe opens the window on statistics, which is where the government's executive branch excels. Search the Statistical Abstract of the United States by keyword. If it is not complete enough, try "Statistical Searches," an index to over 100,000 statistical publications, many available in full text. It also contains links to government agency web sites. The Lexis-Nexis databases can only be accessed from web-accessible computers that are part of the UCM network. They are not accessible off campus.

• InfoTrac (formerly SearchBank)
SearchBank has a new name and a new look. The two databases, Expanded Academic ASAP and Business and Company ASAP still offer subject and advanced searching, but now also offer "relevance searching" which ranks search results by relevance. The improved interface makes it easy to limit searches to refereed publications, full-text publications, and to a particular journal or time frame. With the correct authorization and password InfoTrac is now available off-campus to Central students, faculty and staff.

• FirstSearch
Next year Library Services will switch permanently to the new FirstSearch interface (currently available as an option from the Jump Off Page at http://library.ucmo.edu/services/jump/jump.htm). New options include the ability to limit searching to a particular institution, searching across multiple FirstSearch databases, and customization of the search interface.