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Fred
O. Dennis Company
Our true beginnings can be traced to the early 1920s, when Fred O. Dennis
began selling law books and legal forms from his office in Buffalo,
New York. At that time, Ohio's numerous county law libraries were in
need of the session laws and other reports from all of the states in
the Union. Dennis began to network on a nationwide scale, traveling
from law library to law library in order to fill the needs of the Ohio
county law libraries. In his travels, Dennis became intimately familiar
with the collections of the nation's law libraries, an intimacy which
quickly earned him the respect and trust of law librarians. In 1940,
Dennis published Law Library News, the first service of its type,
which provided information on new law titles, along with brief descriptions.
Very shortly after this, the need arose for supplying out-of-print Government
Printing Office (GPO) documents, and Dennis again met the needs of his
customers by becoming one of the major reprinters in the nation for
out-of-print GPO documents. Other reprint titles soon followed, including
the first 25 volumes of Yale Law Journal and many other legal periodicals
and legal classics.
William
S. Hein & Co., Inc.
At the age of 16, William S. Hein Sr. became an apprentice to his uncle,
Fred O. Dennis, who began to teach him everything he knew about the
law publishing business. Bill remained with the Fred O. Dennis company
for 27 years, but the innate desire to own his own company led to his
departure from his uncle's business, and in 1961, Bill and his wife,
Ilene, started William S. Hein & Co., Inc. Within just a few years,
Hein became one of the major law book reprinters in the United States,
and this foothold allowed for expansion into original publications.
In 1974, the microform division of William S. Hein & Co., Inc. was launched,
propelling the company into the modern age of collection development.
Also during this time, Hein expanded into many other law library services,
including legal periodical distribution, subscription services, and
continuations services. All of these services were created with one
goal in mind: to satisfy the needs of the law librarian and make his
or her job easier. In his time, Bill Hein Sr. was credited with no fewer
than three major landmark achievements: his ability to perceive changes
in legal education and research, his realization that microforms were
necessary to help libraries deal with space issues, and his ability
to open foreign markets to American law books. When he died in 1976,
Bill Hein Sr. left the company in the able hands of his family and dedicated
employees, who had worked behind the scenes to help create the Company's
success.
In late 1976, Bill
Hein's son, William S. Hein Jr., made his first major mark on the Company
and its customers by acquiring the Nebrich Bookbindery. This acquisition
allowed Hein to have total quality control over all its book production,
which benefited the customer by guaranteeing a high-quality book on
his or her library shelf.
By the early 1980s,
Hein had entrenched itself not only in the North American market, but
had also expanded into the markets of Australia, Japan, Western Europe,
South America, and Israel as well. With the acquisition of the Dennis
Company in 1983, Hein became the world's largest distributor of legal
periodicals in both hardcopy and micro format.
William
S. Hein & Co., Inc. - 1990 to Present...
The company continued its successful growth in the 1990s, publishing
well-respected titles dealing with U.S. and international treaty research,
as well as other valuable collections for the law library community.
In 1991, the company debuted its first CD-ROM product, Hein's U.S. Treaty
Index, at the AALS Meeting. The company also expanded into digital imaging,
leading the industry in maximizing digital technology to deliver high-quality
reprint titles. Hein donated its high-quality images of the Nuremburg
Trials to Yale's Avalon project. By the late 1990s, Bill Hein Jr. realized
that in order to continue to be able to provide superior customer service,
Hein was in need of a major acquisition. In late 1998, Hein acquired
Fred B. Rothman & Co. of Littleton, Colorado. Although Rothman and Hein
had been competitors in the law publishing business for years, this
acquisition was beneficial in insuring the continued success of a family-owned
law publisher that would deliver a high level of customer service that
was quickly disappearing in the industry.
Today, William S.
Hein & Co., Inc. is a thriving, customer service driven provider of
legal products and services, striving to deliver the products and services
demanded by law librarians. The intimacy and philosophy that Fred Dennis
established in the 1920s remains today, with nearly 75% of Hein's business
coming from just 500 of the top 2000 legal research libraries worldwide.
Hein is one of the leading periodical subscription agents, with more
than 60% of all U.S. law libraries utilizing its services. Hein has
been chosen as a microform archivist for collections by the American
Bar Association, the American Law Institute, National Conference of
Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, the National Center for State Courts,
and the Council of State Governments, and has special arrangements to
reprint publications of the Selden Society and the Ames Foundation.
West and Lexis have also licensed Hein to microfiche the Superseded
State Codes to save valuable shelf space for law libraries.
Hein is recognized
as a leader in the preservation of retrospective legal materials. Our
digital images of American State Papers have been used by the United
States Government, and a major legal research institution is utilizing
our expertise to digitally store and reproduce high-quality reprints
of legal classics, insuring the availability of these important works
for future generations of legal researchers.
What
the Future Holds...
Currently, of the more than 700 hardcopy legal periodical titles in
our warehouse, nearly 9 million law review images are archived either
on microform or digitally. In addition, Hein has more than 65 million
images of monographs and government documents stored on microform and/or
digitally preserved, allowing Hein to move steadily into the future
of digital, web-based delivery.
Our growth and development
have been steady since the early 1920s. Our focus to deliver the highest
quality products and services to the law library profession remains
the primary goal at Hein. As we move into the digital age of information
delivery, our commitment to our customers remains as strong as ever.
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