|
School of Law » Law Library
» Spotlights » New - LexisNexis Congressional Hearings and Research Digital Collections
|
ZOOM large|small |  |
| Web View |  |
Spotlight
New - LexisNexis Congressional Hearings and Research Digital Collections
Tried LexisNexis Congressional lately? The Law Library has added two new digitized collections of key Congressional documents. With these new modules, your first-stop for U.S. legislative history research may also be your last.
LexisNexis Congressional is a premier legislative finding tool, long providing the simplest access to U.S. Congressional publications (reports, hearings, documents, prints), compiled legislative histories, bills, laws and other relevant Congressional information. Until recently the full-text documents were available either in books, on microfiche, or digitally for more recent items. Those digital versions (LexisNexis on Congressional, Westlaw) were not adequate for citation purposes and, in the case of Hearings, were incomplete.
Now, with the addition of the full Congressional Hearings Digital Collection from 1824 along with Committee Prints and CRS Reports from 2004, more and more of the actual legislative history documents are available online. Add in the Readex Serial Set providing access to Committee Reports and Documents from 1789, and the Congressional Record on HeinOnline and you have a full-fledged collecton of digital legislative documents, available from anywhere to our students, faculty and staff.
In short, the Lewis & Clark Law School Community now has access to an amazing digital collection of the nation '92s Congressional documents:
- Full text Hearings dating back to 1824 (LexisNexis Congressional)
- Meticulously researched Committee Prints or research studies from 2004 (LexisNexis Congressional)
- Concise Congressional Research Service reports from 2004 (LexisNexis Congressional)
- Full-text Reports and Documents from 1789 (Readex Serial Set)
- Debates from the Congressional Record & Debates from 1789 (HeinOnline)
Hearings
Congressional hearings are a fount of information and have long been among the library's most used microfiche collections. With the addition of the Congressional Hearings Digital Collection, LexisNexis Congressional now includes searchable PDFs, abstracting, indexing and bibliographic information for Congressional hearings from 1824-present.
Hearings are held to enable committees to gather opinions and information to help Members of Congress make decisions regarding proposed legislation or to help them fulfill their oversight and investigation responsibilities.
The LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection gives researchers access to all published and unpublished hearings. Both published and unpublished hearings contain the full transcripts of the proceedings, including all oral statements, committee questions, and discussion. Published hearings also contain texts of related reports, statistical analyses, correspondence, exhibits, and articles presented by witnesses or inserted into the record by Members of Congress and committee staff.
The Hearings Digital Collection will be fully incorporated into LexisNexis Congressional search results by the end of 2008. There are a few gaps which will also be filled by the end of the year.
Until then, you'll find links to both the traditional Hearings results (abstracts & links to recent hearings via LexisNexis) and Hearings -- Digital Collection, the full-text PDFs. Search via the basic search page, or use the advanced search tab to focus your search on hearings only. To do so, go to advanced search, then select only the Hearings checkbox, and finally be sure to check the date range (by default set to last two years only).
Prints and Congressional Research Service Reports
We have also added the LexisNexis Research Digital Collection to LexisNexis Congressional. This full-text digital collection contains Congressional Committee Prints and Reports of the Congressional Research Service from 2004-present.
Committee Prints are documents (but not formal House and Senate Documents) created in the course of the business of a Congressional committee, and approved for release by the Committee chair. They typically are research papers and relevant background information compiled by committee staff to aid members of Congress in their consideration of a bill.
Prints include items such as topical monographic studies; investigative field reports; analyses of bills, including comparisons with existing law; staff memoranda and reports; reports submitted to the committee by Federal agencies; directories, bibliographies, and other reference materials; statistical compilations; complete or partial texts of committee hearings; and preliminary drafts of reports and bills.
The reports of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) consist of research reports (from brief summaries to full-length studies) prepared by subject experts for Members of Congress on a wide range of topics '96 foreign relations, immigration, Federal case law, Medicare, terrorism, national defense, and energy policy, to name but a few.
Off-Campus Access
LexisNexis Congressional is available from on-campus to all, and from off-campus to Lewis & Clark Law School students, faculty and staff using their L&C e-mail usernames and passwords. Just use the links in this spotlight, or use the off-campus link for LexisNexis Congressional on our Databases page.
Law school alums, members of the College and Graduate School, and all library visitors will find full access to LexisNexis Congressional at the legal research stations available in the Boley Law Library.
For more info and questions about these and all of our databases stop by, call or email the Reference Desk.
