HeinOnline: Accessing Articles

The Database Selector Tool is used to search within a specific database or set of databases.

From the search bar found on the HeinOnline home page, select All Databases from the drop-down menu. A new window with a list of the databases included in the Department's subscription will appear. Select the database(s) you want to search. After making your selection, click Submit.

Selected database(s) will be loaded to the search bar. To search the chosen database(s), enter the relevant terms of the search in the search bar. Once the terms are entered, a selection of options will appear in a drop-down menu. Select the option Just search for and click on the magnifying glass at the right.

 Tip: When searching, ensure that phrases are inside quotation marks (e.g., if searching for resources on employment equality, place quotation marks around the phrase "employment equality").

A list of articles found in the selected database(s) where the search terms appear will be generated. Text that matches the search terms will appear in bold. 

The list of articles can be narrowed down by selecting options from the Refine Your Search box at the left. 

Articles can be organized by relevance, publication date, number of times cited, and number of times accessed. Use the drop-down menu that appears beside Sort by to organize articles.

A ScholarCheck box will appear beside each article. This box gives information on the number of times the article has been cited and the number of times it has been accessed by other HeinOnline users. These metrics can be used to assess the credibility of an article. 

To conduct an advanced search, select the Advanced Search option found under the search bar on the HeinOnline home page. 

After selecting this option, a new screen will pop up with various advanced search options. Users can search by section title, book title, or author, or can select Full Text and enter a keyword in the search bar to search for articles where this word appears in the body of the article. Users can also restrict their search to material published within a specific date range by entering start and end dates in the date bar at the bottom of the screen.

Clicking on Venn Diagram Search at the right allows users to search for articles where multiple keywords appear. Keywords should be separated by AND (e.g., employment AND equity). To use this tool, enter the terms in the search bar and click the Search button to pull up a Venn diagram that illustrates the different combinations for the entered terms. This search will also list the articles where these combinations of terms appear. 

The Venn Diagram search can be used to refine searches. Users can conduct a Venn Diagram search in one database or can search across all subscribed databases. This second method eliminates the need to continuously switch between databases or edit searches. More information on the Venn Diagram search is available through the HeinOnline Knowledge Base. 

From the Advanced Search page, users can also access the Citation Format Guide. Users can select a journal title from the database list and enter a volume and page number to retrieve the article associated with this citation. As an example, selecting Harvard Law Review and entering volume 118, pg. 520 will retrieve the article "Nine Justices, Ten Years: A Statistical Retrospective" (see below). 

HeinOnline maintains groups of resources that are organized into collections. Collections are available from the HeinOnline home page and are visible after logging in. Users can click on the name of a collection to view the resources included. Clicking on one of these resource groups will direct users to a new page where the content of the collection can be searched. Click on the Advanced Search option to be directed to a new window where content in the selected collection can be searched by entering terms in the search bar provided. 

As an example, a keyword search of "employment" in the Law Journal Library collection will search for relevant content published in journals that are part of this collection, such as the Industrial Law Journal (see below).

Users can search across multiple databases from the HeinOnline home page by navigating to the search bar at the top of the screen and clicking on All Databases.

A pop-up window will appear. To search across multiple databases, choose Select All and click Submit. Users can then enter search terms to search for content across all HeinOnline databases. Rather than searching across all databases, users can choose to narrow their search by selecting relevant databases from the list that appears in the pop-up window.