This month, HeinOnline is turning 21! While William S. Hein & Co., Inc.’s roots date back more than 100 years, it’s hard to believe that we have been serving the library and academic community in an online setting for more than 2 decades. What better way to celebrate our birthday than to thank our loyal customers for their unwavering support and assistance in making HeinOnline the research powerhouse that is it today.

We’re excited to announce that we’re giving away a $500 VISA^® gift card! Do you want to go on a shopping spree courtesy of HeinOnline? Watch the short video below to learn how you can enter to win, and keep reading to learn all the things about HeinOnline. Official contest rules are provided below.

A Look Back

A memo drafted back in 1995 titled “Electronic Law Review project,” by now CEO Kevin Marmion, is what sparked the initial idea for HeinOnline. Marmion was acutely aware that librarians were running out of shelf space, and he knew the Hein Company was competing with larger vendors, such as Westlaw and Lexis. It was a pivotal move for the Hein company. The emergence of advanced scanning software, increased computer storage capacity, new computer programs allowing for organizing documents, and the development of the World Wide Web—all of this made HeinOnline theoretically possible.

Four and a half years later, HeinOnline was born. While the database originally held 23 law journals, it now contains nearly 3,000 academic journals, in addition to 100 other databases! To read a more detailed history of HeinOnline, check out The Invention of HeinOnline: The Story of Hein’s Dramatic Transformation in Response to the Coming of the Electronic Age by Joe Gerken.

Take a scroll through memory lane and see what our old interface used to look like.

By the Numbers

Since the initial release of HeinOnline:

• Nearly 194 million pages have been added
• More than 300,000 titles have been added
• More than 100 databases have been added to HeinOnline’s unique, user-friendly, and image-based platform
• HeinOnline has gained subscribers in more than 175 countries, and its customer base has grown to include law schools, colleges and universities, law firms, court libraries, public libraries, government agencies, nonprofits, and individuals, among others
• HeinOnline has gone through three interface updates, including our new intuitive one-box search

In the past 12 months alone, HeinOnline has added:

• Nearly 140 new journals
• Nearly 1,600 books to the Legal Classics Library
• More than 9.3 million total pages
• Nearly 17,000 new titles

New databases include:

• Bibliography of American Law School Casebooks
• American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
• COVID-19: Pandemics Past and Present
• Executive Privilege
• Civil Rights and Social Justice
• NOMOS: American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy

Existing databases have also been updated with new content:

• New and updated chapters added to National Survey of State Laws
• Essential sports titles now available via Hackney packages
• Electoral College subcollection added to the U.S. Presidential Library
• Addition of Past Pandemics subcollection to our new COVID database
• The Great Gatsby added to the Legal Classics Library
• Welsh Legal History Society publications added to Selden Society Publications and the History of Early English Law database
• 8-volume set dedicated to Associate Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination added to History of Supreme Court Nominations

Several new features have been added in the past few months, most of which came from customer suggestions!

• Google Scholar and SSRN links added to author profile pages
• Availability facet in the Law Journal Library
• Addition of ORCID records in author profile pages
• Several MyHein enhancements:
  • Ability to favorite databases
  • Ability to manage author alerts
  • Ability to manage your search history
  • Google SSO integration
• Search multiple selected databases at once
• Case citation alerts for author profile pages
• Australian Guide to Legal Citations (AGLC) added to citation formats
• Citation formats and access links included when emailing PDFs

To see the full history of HeinOnline, check out our HeinOnline Timeline.

Our Giveaway Rules

What you win: $500 Visa^® Gift Card (USD).

How to enter: Subscribe to the HeinOnline Blog by June 7, 2021, for a chance to win. Already subscribe? You’ll be automatically entered. There is no cost for an entry.

• The contest opens at 9 AM ET on May 17, 2021.
• The contest closes at 9 PM ET on June 7, 2021.
• The winner will be chosen randomly and contacted directly via email. We will announce the winner on the HeinOnline Twitter (@HeinOnline), Instagram (@HeinOnline), and Facebook (@HeinOnline) accounts upon the winner claiming their prize.
• If the winner does not respond within one week, they will be disqualified and a new winner will be randomly selected.
• Any information collected will be used for the sole purpose of delivering the prize to the winner.
• This contest is not sponsored by YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. We are solely responsible for the contest and delivering the prize to the winner.

The extended version of our official contest rules are available here.