Information Connection, 1017 WYBJ, Vol. 40 No. 5. 50
Author | Matt Swift State Law Librarian Wyoming State Law Library |
HeinOnline: The "Other" Legal Database
Matt Swift State Law Librarian Wyoming State Law Library
What is HeinOnline?
HeinOnline (HOL) is the third largest legal subscription database after Westlaw and Lexis Nexis. While Westlaw and Lexis Nexis are the two most popular legal databases, HOL includes worthwhile features and content for legal research.
At its
inception, HeinOnline was envisioned as a source for older
volumes of law reviews. Indeed, initially, it was
colloquially called the "old law journal
project."The plan was to go from volume one up to the
1980s, i.e., the years when Lexis and West-law began coverage
of most journals. This decision was based on the assumption
that law libraries likely did not want to pay for duplicate
coverage of the same content.
HOL has
grown considerably since it was launched in 2000. HOLs large
law journal collection contains more than 2,300 law journals
on a variety of subjects, including animal rights, human
rights, political science, history, gender studies, elections
law, civil rights, and foreign relations. All its journals
date back to inception and more than 90% are available
through the current issue or volume.
How is HOL Different From Westlaw or Lexis?
HOL is unique in that all the materials in its collection are scans of the original documents. For this reason, the documents look exactly as they did when they were originally published and there is no danger of typos in the documents due to being manually keyed in. HOL says because they use image-based PDFs, their materials are as authoritative as print material for citation purposes.
Searching for HOL documents can be...
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