2019 turned out to be quite an eventful year around the globe. Let’s take a look at some of the major events that happened this past year:

• California Representative Nancy Pelosi was elected the new House speaker in a majority vote by the House of Representatives.
• UK Prime Minister Theresa May‘s Brexit deal was defeated for the third time, leading to her resignation.
• President Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. leader to set foot in North Korea.
• Boris Johnson was elected as the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. The conservative party later won in a landslide election, securing 365 of the 650 seats in the House of Parliament.
• NASA completed its first all-female astronaut spacewalk.
• Notre Dame Cathedral was destroyed during a devastating fire.
• House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
• Northern Ireland legalized abortion and same-sex marriage.
• The highest number of mass shootings occurred in the United States including in Texas, Ohio, and California.
• The Buffalo Bills made the NFL playoffs (no really, this was big news for your favorite HeinOnline employees).

Several iconic entertainers passed away, including actor Michael J. Pollard, actress Diahann Carroll, singer and songwriter Eddie Money, broadcaster Jack Whitaker, Broadway star Carol Channing, producer Lee Mendelson, Golden Globe winning actress Katherine Helmond, and actor Luke Perry. Other influential people who were lost in 2019 include U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, journalist Cokie Roberts, former U.S. Senator Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, and designer Karl Lagerfeld. The sports world also lost defensive back Willie Brown, former NFL running back Cedric Benson, pitcher Tyler Skaggs, Hall of Fame legend Bart Starr, and eight-time NBA champion John Havlicek.

While all of this news was breaking worldwide, HeinOnline was expanding. In 2019 alone, HeinOnline had more than 15 million searches and nearly 1 billion hits! We added new databases and content and implemented new search features. Here’s a brief synopsis of what happened with HeinOnline in 2019.

New Databases

1. GAO Reports and Comptroller General Decisions

HeinOnline’s GAO Reports and Comptroller General Decisions database contains reports on audits, surveys, investigations, and evaluations of federal programs conducted by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO). All published reports, testimonies, correspondence, and special publications are included (products that are restricted or classified are not). The database also contains decisions and opinions issued by the Comptroller General in areas of federal law such as appropriations, bid protests, and federal agency rulemaking. HeinOnline’s metadata indexing, plus its fully searchable, user-friendly interface, make it simple to browse and search this content.

2. Brill | Nijhoff Journal & Yearbook Collections

This collection brings current content in addition to the complete archive of more than 40 prestigious journals and nearly 20 yearbooks from Brill | Nijhoff publishers to HeinOnline. The journal and yearbook collections may be purchased separately or as a package. HeinOnline’s worldwide customer base now has the option to have access to the entire run of this highly prestigious list in international law. Included are a multitude of subjects such as children’s rights, environmental law, human rights, the law of the sea, health law, and much more!

3. Democracy in America

A partnership with Alan Keely, Associate Director for Collection Services at Wake Forest Law Library, brings a new and exciting version of Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic work, Democracy in America, complete with more than 1,000 annotations and references. Meticulously researched by Keely, this interactive digital edition takes students and researchers back to Tocqueville’s 1831, providing full-text links to the works Tocqueville read while he traveled, researched, and wrote Democracy in America. Keely’s annotations provide insight into Tocqueville’s thinking, grounding the work within the context in which it was written.

4. Business and Legal Aspects of Sports and Entertainment (BLASE)

Edited by Frank Houdek and Ed Edmonds, this database gives users access to a one-stop shop for business and legal aspects of sports and entertainment with more than 1.3 million pages of critical information! It includes highly editorialized articles and cases covering more than 55 sports and entertainment topics. Research across more than 8,000 scholarly articles and dive into hundreds of government documents including hearings, CBO Reports, CRS Reports, and much more!

5. State Constitutions Illustrated

State Constitutions Illustrated has nearly 9,000 current and historical constitutions for all fifty states! Including more than 1,000 books and 770,000 pages of works related to each state’s constitutional history, it’s the most comprehensive state constitution research platform available! Not only does this database contain an extensive collection of pre-statehood primary material, but it is also composed of original and consolidated texts heavily annotated with references to case law. State Constitutions Illustrated is perfect for anyone interested in comparative constitutional studies, the legal and political history of the United States, or state-specific research.

6. U.S. Presidential Impeachment Library

Organized around the four affected presidents, this collection brings together a variety of documents both contemporaneous and asynchronous to each president’s impeachment, presenting a snapshot of the political climate as each played out as well as the long view history has taken of past proceedings. Congressional Research Service reports round out a general discussion of presidential impeachment, and a curated list of scholarly articles, external links, and a bibliography provide avenues for further research on this topic. Also included is the ever-growing resource Whistleblower Complaint on Ukraine, compiled by Kelly Smith at UC San Diego, which brings together official documents related to the whistleblower complaint and impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump.

New Features

1. ScholarCheck Update

Thanks to a suggestion from a HeinOnline user, ScholarCheck statistics inside a document are no longer initially found in a pop-up box. The pop-up box blocked some text in the table of contents, and we agreed with the user that this information could be displayed more effectively.

Color code:

• Blue: cited by articles
• Red: cited by cases
• Green: cited by documents in the American Law Institute Library
• Gold: number of times accessed

2. Updated MARC Record Icons

Another customer suggestion prompted a change to our indication tool for MARC Records. She thought our MARC Records indicator (R) meant restricted. Within days, HeinOnline was able to change the R indicator to an icon to avoid any customer confusion. Now, the icon below can be clicked to view a title’s MARC Record.

3. Author Profile Link in MyHein

Authors who have enhanced their author profile page to include their email address and have also created a MyHein account using the same email address will see a direct link to access their author profile page via the MyHein menu. To access this feature, authors must be signed in to MyHein. This feature allows authors to easily access their author profile if they need to send any updated information or if they want to view their metrics.

4. Venn Diagram Searching

With the Venn Diagram search in HeinOnline, researchers can visualize the results yield of various keywords to better refine their searches. Users can not only search with the Venn Diagram within one database, but they can also use it to refine their searches across all subscribed databases. This feature saves valuable time and effort, eliminating the need to continuously switch databases and/or edit a search.

5. LibGuides

LibGuides are an easy way to compile knowledge, share useful information, and organize and showcase subject-specific resources. There are more than 20 HeinOnline LibGuides currently available, with the goal of adding three guides a month until a LibGuide exists for each database. Each guide features database-specific content, search tips, tools, features, training materials, and more. Users of all backgrounds now have easy access to database knowledge and interface functionality. As an added bonus, libraries are able to feature HeinOnline’s LibGuides on their websites as a student resource! 

6. Improved Author Profile Pages

Topics identified with a particular author are now displayed on author profile pages. Also available is the Explore This Author interactive tool which uses metadata, natural language processing, and machine learning to analyze authors and identify relationships between them. Discover authors’ most-discussed topics, the journals in which they most frequently publish, recurring co-authors, and more with this exciting new feature.

7. MyHein Bookmarking Update

Users who are logged in to their MyHein profile can see if documents within results have already been bookmarked. Never bookmark the same document twice! Skip over previously bookmarked items and move on to new documents to add to your tags. The greyed-out box indicates to users that a document has already been bookmarked.

Secrets of the Serial Set

In May 2019, HeinOnline launched the Secrets of the Serial Set blog series dedicated to revealing the historic material hidden throughout the immense publication. Each month, we explore notable events in U.S. history using the primary sources themselves. Learn more about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the Louisiana Purchase, the prohibition of alcohol in the United States, and more with the U.S. Congressional Serial Set!

Other Notable Content Additions

Since January 2019, HeinOnline has added:

• 11,606,817 pages, bringing the total page count to 178,242,340 pages
• 119 new journals
• More than 60 Brill Publishing journals and yearbooks
• 438 titles to Religion and the Law
• 764 titles to American Indian Law Collection
• 775 volumes to U.S. Treaties and Agreements Library
• 1,196 titles to Women and the Law
• 1,126 titles to Immigration Law & Policy in the U.S.
• 1,297 titles to Taxation and Economic Reform in America: Parts I & II
• 1,453 titles to U.S. International Trade
• 2,484 legal classics
• 3,313 CRS Reports
• 4,033 congressional hearings
• 5,096 volumes to the Serial Set
• 7,940 congressional documents

New titles and new content for existing titles continue to be added and milestones continue to be reached, including:

Reports of U.S. Presidential Commissions and Other Advisory Bodies: A Bibliographic Listing was named to the 2018 List of Best Historical Materials.

Session Laws indexing project continues. The following states were indexed back to inception: Arkansas, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.

The 8th edition of National Survey of State Laws was published, which contains an additional 200 pages and four years of updates for every chapter. It also includes nine new chapters!

Two volumes of the redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report about Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election were added to the U.S. Congressional Documents database.

U.S. News announced they were considering evaluating U.S. law school scholarly impact and would be using HeinOnline as the source for citation data.

We celebrated our 19th birthday!

More than 20 Wiley journals, including 14 brand new titles, were added to the Law Journal Library.

Competition Law Journal was added to the Edward Elgar Publishing Package.

The Law Journal Library surpassed 2,700 journals and currently has 2,775.

A new 2017-2018 volume for Subject Compilation of State Laws became available, containing nearly 1,100 entries under 310 main subject headings.

For a quick visual summary, check out this infographic!

We had another great year and would like to thank our loyal customers for their support and feedback. Stay tuned to see what’s new in 2020!

For questions or for help using HeinOnline, contact our dedicated support team at (800) 277-6995, email us, or chat with us!