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What You Can't Find on the Internet

Some of the reason old fogies like myself cringe when people say "I Googled it and couldn't find anything" is because some stuff just isn't available online. Or, you have to know where to look if you want to find it. In other words, the Internet is good for some stuff, but not everything.

Take Ohio criminal law from 1973. If you need to know what a particular Ohio statute looked like in 1973, where would you turn? Westlaw has historical Ohio statutes but only back as far as 1993. Lexis isn't much better: it's Ohio Historical Archive (OHARCH) database gives you statutory text back to 1992.

HeinOnline recently began offering older state statutes as well. The benefit to these is that you get the pdf of the item you are looking for. That is, the image you see is a scanned copy of the actual print version. Alas, while Hein does go way back, it only brings you up to 1940 for Ohio---other states have different dates of coverage. (LLMC also has some historical statutes available, but it too doesn't provide much 20th century content.)

To get coverage for Ohio statutes from 1941-1991, you're in luck: we have the Ohio Revised code in print going way back on the main floor of the library. Feel free to come in, e-mail, or give a call if you can't find what you're looking for, like that 1973 Ohio criminal statute.