Tips and Tricks for HeinOnline
If you read the Develop Keywords page, you remember it laid out the first two steps of legal research:
1. Identifying relevant information for queries
2. Identifying relevant information for refining results
- HeinOnline Academic This link opens in a new window HeinOnline is the world's largest fully searchable, image-based government document and legal research database. It contains comprehensive coverage from inception of U.S. statutory materials, U.S. Congressional Documents and more than 2,600 scholarly journals. HeinOnline provides topic specific databases including all of the world's constitutions, all U.S. treaties, collections of classic treatises and presidential documents, Criminal Justice, Religion and the Law, and Women and the Law among others. Full text of state and federal case law powered by Fastcase is included.
Need Help? HeinOnline LibGuide
- LibGuideA library guide developed by HeinOnline to help you better understand all the tricks of the trade for how to best utilize the database.
Exact Search
Once you have identified search terms try putting them in quotes. This will greatly improve the specificity of your searches because it will exclude items that do not include the exact search terms you are looking for. What would the individual terms "United" "States" "of" "America" pull up instead of "United States of America"?
Generic words often introduce a lot of clutter into your search. Exact search terms can eliminate the extraneous results. This can greatly improve searching for specific people and places that may have a more generic word within the whole term (such as "Donald Trump" or "Salisbury University)"
Boolean Operators
Once you have identified the search terms you think are relevant, combine them into an improved query through the use of "AND" "OR" "NOT" Boolean Operators. the computer recognized these capitalized terms as an instruction to search it's documents differently.
"AND" operator results in sources that include both terms. For example, while the query: Diet Coke health might return information on diet and heath (ignoring the term Coke), or Coke and health (the incorrect soda); a search: "Diet Coke" AND health would ensure the sources find not only articles on Diet Coke, but that they will include its health considerations.
Applying Search Filters
After you run your search, you can take advantage of the filters on the left side of the page.
Keep special mind to the Date, Section Type, and Location.
Search Full Text
Often the easiest way to search is a full text search. In Hein, full text search uses a software known as Fastcase. Searching within collection or by citation can be more efficient, but work better once the researcher has greater familiarity with legal research.
Tip
If you want to search within law review articles or legal code, use the magnifying glass button.
