Federal Government Documents Tutorial
Other Congressional Sources
Congressional Serial Set
The Congressional Serial Set is a major historical
collection of material printed for the House and Senate as they conduct the
business of Congress. The bulk of the publications contained in the
Serial Set are reports and documents from congressional
committees. Reports are issued by committees as they release proposed
legislation for consideration by their parent body, the full House or
Senate. Documents can really be considered to be any miscellaneous
publication that Congress sees fit to have printed.
The printed Serial Set sits at the upper end of the SuDoc
call number sequence, in the second floor stack ranges nearest Hillsborough
Street in the D.H. Hill Library. They carry their own sequence number
(1-13,000+), and are simply filed in numerical order.
The CIS company has produced an index to the Serial Set,
the CIS U.S. Serial Set Index. It works exactly as do the CIS
titles described above, and is shelved with other CIS titles in the Reference
- U.S. Docs area on the second floor, north bookstacks overlooking
Hillsborough Street.
LexisNexis Congressional
LexisNexis Congressional
includes (under the "Publications" link) texts of congressional reports (from
1989, 101st Congress, to present) and documents (from 1995, 104th Congress, to
present).
GPO Access
The printed version of the Congressional Serial Set is no
longer being sent to depository libraries. Since 1995 (the 104th
Congress), the individual reports and documents from the Serial Set volumes,
along with a number of other document titles published by federal government
agencies, have been made available in electronic form from GPO
Access.
Thomas
The Library of Congress maintains the website, Thomas, that includes committee
reports since 1995.
American Memory
Another Library of Congress website, American Memory,
contains a large amount of legislative resources from the 1770s to 1875 in a
section titled A Century of Lawmaking
for the New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates.
Congressional Index
The Congressional Index differs from the tools discussed
above. It's published by Commerce Clearinghouse, not CIS. It is a
paper, loose-leaf service with weekly updates "designed to aid research on the
status and history of legislation and other matters in Congress. It
provides current reporting and an historical reference on the activities of
each Congress." It is shelved temporarily with the majority of the
reference collection in 6th floor tower stacks of the D.H. Hill Library. Its
call number is KF49 .C6.
The Congressional Index is usually found in two annual
volumes. "Volume 1 covers activities common to both houses of Congress,
including Presidential action. It also contains material specific to the
Senate. Volume 2 reports on activities of the House of Representatives
and actions taken by the Senate on House measures."
The volumes have these sections:
Subject Index
Author Index
Enactments -- Vetoes (vol. 1)
Members
Committees -- Hearings
Bills and Resolutions
Status of Bills and Resolutions
Voting Records
A great deal of the data in the Congressional Index, from
the 103d Congress (1993-94) forward, is also available from Thomas and
GPO
Access. The loose-leaf Congressional Index is the
most current paper product containing information about U.S. legislative
action.
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