Where in the World is Hein?

In HeinOnline's October 2009 Newsletter we introduced the "Where in the World is Hein" contest. In each "Where in the World" blog post, you will find a picture of one of our sales representatives in front of a building, landmark, with a librarian, or other people or things. If you can correctly identify the location, you will be entered for a chance to win a "Where in the World is Hein" t-shirt!

Steve Roses, our Director of Sales, has been traveling quite a bit since he joined the Hein Company in an effort to introduce himself in his new role. Can you guess where Steve is in this picture?

E-mail your guess to marketing@wshein.com by November 30, 2009 and if your answer is correct you'll be entered for a chance to win a "Where in the World is Hein" t-shirt! Be sure to include your name, organization or institution, and your mailing address. We'll announce the winner in a follow-up blog post and in the monthly announcement.

Good luck guessing!

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Searching HeinOnline - 4 Key Techniques You Need to Know and How It Is Different Than Other Legal Databases

You are likely used to the searching methodology used in other legal databases, as you learned it while taking classes in law school. Then, you were introduced to HeinOnline, a powerful legal research tool with more than 50 million pages of legal content. Your initial reaction may have been, "50 million pages; that is a lot of content to browse through!" Yes, indeed it is. However, with the right searching techniques, it is easy to find what you are looking for in HeinOnline.

While the search syntax used in HeinOnline is different than what you may be used to, with a little practice and the understanding of a few key techniques, you'll be searching in no time. Howard W. Hunter Law Library from BYU Law School wrote an excellent blog post outlining the 4 key techniques you need to know to conduct the most powerful search queries in HeinOnline. These 4 key techniques include understanding Boolean operators in HeinOnline, using a root expander to find alternate endings, proximity searches, and boosting terms. Check out the post on Hunter's Query: The HWHLL Blog

As they note in their blog, "Boosting a term allows you to influence the relevancy ranking of your results list. (By the way, you can't have your results ranked by relevance when using a terms and connectors search in Westlaw or Lexis.)"

Take a moment to check out their blog post and familiarize yourself with these key searching techniques. They can really make a difference in your searching abilities in HeinOnline.

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Are You Providing Access to HeinOnline For Hundreds of Users? Let Your Users Know by Branding Your HeinOnline Account.

On any given day you may have hundreds of users access your organization's subscription to HeinOnline. Unfortunately, many of those users may not understand that this valuable resource is being made available to them with support and funding from your organization. We realize how important it is for you to communicate this fact to your users, and we have developed a way to do it easily.

What you are seeing below is an example of the new account branding opportunities HeinOnline has recently made available as a free option to all HeinOnline subscribers. This is an example of what a user would see on the Welcome screen in HeinOnline.

(numbers appear in image for demonstration purposes only)

Here is a breakdown of what options are available for Heinonline branding:

1. Name - Here, the name of the organization, library, school, or firm that is providing the HeinOnline subscription is listed. This may also be hot linked to a website of your choosing.
2. Organization logo - This is hot linked to the same website as the name of the organization.
3. Optional Link - This can be used for pointing users to online catalogs, or any other link your users may frequently visit.
4. Optional Link - Same as the optional link above, but twice as nice.

When user are in the HeinOnline libraries, a small branding message with the name of the organization is added to the top of page. Clicking this message takes the user to a page very similar to the example above.

If you would live to take advantage of these new branding opportunities in HeinOnline, please send a request for information to holsupport(at)wshein.com, or click the feedback button at the top of your HeinOnline page. We must receive approval from the account's administrator before we put the branding material in place. If you do not know who your account administrator is, please specify this in the email. Lastly, We would like to thank the RAND Corporation for working with us to develop these options, and for allowing us to use their branding information for this post.

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Sources of Compiled Legislative History Added to Title Information Links

HeinOnline has made another one of it's useful resources more accessible and easier to use. The database derived from Nancy Johnson's Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories: A Bibliography of Government Documents, Periodical Articles, and Books, and accessible from the U.S. Federal Legislative History Library is a terrific source available in HeinOnline for finding materials related to major U.S. federal laws. Most major U.S. federal laws are included in this database. Each piece of legislation available in the database includes the public law number, Statutes at Large citation, and any relevant books, articles, and Legislative Histories in its entry. Any of the content listed that is available in HeinOnline has been hot-linked for easy access.

To make this content easier to access for our users, we have recently added the relevant database entry to the information links for each of the Legislative History titles in the U.S. Federal Legislative History Library, and the Taxation & Economic Reform in America Library. Now, all you have to do to access this content is click the small 'i' icon located to the left of the listing of titles in these two libraries.



All of the information you would normally see when viewing the database has been included in the link, plus one added feature. We have integrated Hein's ScholarCheck into the information provided on this page. With this link users can easily see the most current list of articles in HeinOnline that have cited that particular public law.
It is our hope that bringing all of these sources together with just a few clicks of the mouse will streamline research projects and reduce time spent navigating to different online sources.

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'NOT' Operator Added to HeinOnline's Field Search

For those HeinOnline users who prefer to search using the Field Search, we've added a small but powerful option to this search page. The 'NOT' operator is now a selectable option in addition to the AND/OR operators you are used to using. The 'NOT' operator is used in a search the same way that you would use the AND/OR operators. Simply select the NOT option from the drop box. The NOT operator is different because it functions as an exclusionary tool. This can be quite useful in weeding out search results that are very similar to the topic you are looking for, but are actually irrelevant to your search and just diluting the results that you really want. A simple example of how this works is explained in the short video below.

Again, this is just a simple example of how the NOT operator can function. When used correctly, the NOT operator can be a highly effective tool in narrowing your research to the relevant results you need. The NOT operator has always been available for users searching with the Advanced Search. If you'd like to learn more about searching in HeinOnline, we recommend taking a look at some of the training guides in the HeinOnline Wiki.

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