Back in April 2017 we blogged about the Session Laws indexing project and announced that all 50 states were indexed to the chapter or act level from 2000 to current. In January 2018, we released an update to the project, reporting that two states were indexed back to inception. We have been diligently indexing our way through the states and we have some news to share!

Overview of the Project

The following states have been indexed back to inception thus far:

1. California (1849-2017)
2. Massachusetts (1661-2015)
3. New York (1691-2017)
4. Maryland (1692-2018)
5. Florida (1822-2017)
6. Illinois (1809-2016)
7. Ohio (1788-2016)
8. Georgia (1735-2017)
9. Texas (1836-2017)
10. Indiana (1801-2017)

Minnesota will be the next state indexed back to inception.

Save Time with the Session Laws Quick Locator

To quickly retrieve a chapter, act, or page, use the Session Laws Quick Locator tool that can be found either on the Session Laws Library homepage or within a particular state.

Simply select the state and plug in the year and chapter/act information to retrieve the document. For example, enter 1989 in the year field and 13 for the Chapter/Act. 

This tool will take users to the exact page where the chapter begins.

Session Laws Searching

Thanks to the addition of Natural Language Processing tools, searching in Session Laws is easier than ever! Using natural language processing and machine learning tools, entities were extracted, including location, state published, person, and organization. Search results are now enhanced to include more relevant documents.

For example, enter Gun Control.

From the results, select person and choose Barack Obama.

Stay tuned for more upcoming developments with the Session Laws indexing project. Not subscribed to our blog? Click the Subscribe button on our blog homepage and enter your email address.

For help searching or navigating HeinOnline, contact the dedicated support team at (800) 277-6995, by email, or live chat!