Electronic Resource of the Month: HeinOnline Law Journal Library

Many of you are probably familiar with finding law journal articles in Lexis Advance and WestlawNext. This month we’re taking a look at another place to find law journal articles electronically, the HeinOnline Law Journal Library.

Why use Hein when Westlaw and Lexis are so search-friendly and you might be there for other materials? Two great reasons: Years covered and format.

Years covered: Hein often has a greater archive of journals, reaching further into the past. For example, the Loyola Law Review is available from the following dates: Hein – 1941, WestlawNext – 1982, Lexis Advance – 1998.

Format: Use Hein if you want to read the article as it appeared in the journal or if you need an official source for an assignment. The articles on Hein can be considered an official source because they are PDF scans of the journals. 

You can access Hein through the library’s website using the Online Resources page from the homepage. You’ll have to scroll until you find Hein, or you can search for the term. You can see on our webpage all of the Hein collections you have access to, which provide a great range of current and past information for primary and secondary sources.

Once in the Law Journal Library, you can utilize the advanced search feature at the top of the page and search by article title, author, subject, state or country published, full text, and narrow by date. After an initial search, you can further refine using the options on the left hand side menu, including subject, periodical title, country of publication, and date range. Selecting an article will bring you to the PDF scan of the article as it appears in the journal of publication. On the top menu, you can download a PDF of the article, select download or print options, or select a particular page from that volume of the journal using the drop-down menu. Click on the left and right arrows on the top and bottom of the document to navigate to the previous or next page.

If you already have a journal citation and want to quickly find the article, you can use the citation search option. Selection citation at the top of the page; you can type the citation in there, but a better option is to select “Citation Navigator”. As you type in the journal abbreviation in the boxes provided, suggested titles will appear.