Researching U.S. Legislative History Just Got Easier
October 27th, 2005Researching U.S. federal legislative history just got a whole lot easier at the Boley Law Library. With our recent addition of historical indexes to the easy-to-use LexisNexis Congressional and our acquisition of the Congressional Serial Set and American State Papers digital library, comprehensive research of U.S. legislative history documents is now possible on a scale and at speeds never before possible.
The Law Library makes these databases available on-campus to all users and off-campus to L&C Law School students and faculty only. Connecting from off-campus? Be sure to use the links on this page or, as always, the off-campus access links from our Databases & Indexes page.
Check these new databases out for yourself or contact a reference librarian to find out more.
LexisNexis Congressional: Historical Indexes 1789-1969
LexisNexis Congressional (formerly Congressional Universe) has long been the first stop for federal legislative history researchers. By combining the comprehensive CIS Index with full-text documents from LexisNexis, LexisNexis Congressional has made it easy to track down the legislative history of U.S. Congressional actions since 1970.
The new Historical Indexes, now available on the LexisNexis Congressional home page, provide access to Congressional Indexes from 1789-1969, along with Indexes to Unpublished Hearings (previously largely unavailable) through 1980. Searching is available by subject, title, witness, bill or document number, or by committee name. Use these indexes to find Congressional reports, documents, hearings and prints.
Can’t view the full-text in the LexisNexis Congressional Indexes? No problem:
- Find the full-text in microfiche
We have a complete collection of U.S. legislative history materials on microfiche. Just bring your citation to a reference librarian or pull the fiche from the cabinets in the Library Reference Room. Or, - Find the full-text online
Use the Readex Serial Set & American State Papers, a new digital library recently purchased for student and faculty research. Find out more, below.
Readex U.S. Congressional Serial Set (1817-1877)
and
American State Papers (1789-1838)
In a major acquisition to our collection, we have purchased the Readex U.S. Congressional Serial Set and American State Papers digital libraries. The Serial Set contains the journals, documents and reports of the U.S. Congress since 1817, along with Executive Department publications. The American State Papers are a retrospective collection of similar materials from 1789. The digital Serial Set will in time contain a complete Serial Set collection (not available in print in any single library), covering the years 1817 – 1980. Currently available through 1877, releases of new material are provided each month.
In addition to providing digital images of every page of every Serial Set and American State Papers publication, this digital library includes all maps and illustrations in their original color. Neither our microfiche collection nor the Library of Congress makes them available in full-color, making these documents much more useful and easier to read.
The documents in these digital collections are, also for the first time, full-text searchable. Advanced searching is possible, with results provided in chronological order. Clicking on a document’s title brings up the first page of the document, full citation information, and a table of contents with the pages containing results highlighted. Documents can be printed, downloaded, or emailed.
Importantly, access to the documents is also available by publication number, allowing easy access to full-text from LexisNexis Congressional’s results, or by subject. Unlike LexisNexis Congressional’s indexing, subject terms have been created by human examination and indexing of each publication, something never done before. Relevant subject terms are assigned each document, and these terms can then be used to pull up all related documents. Be sure to check the “full citation” link of any found document and expand your search using the subjects.
All of these databases, the LexisNexis Congressional Historical Indexes, Readex U.S. Congressional Serial Set and the American States Papers are available from our Databases & Indexes page. Please be sure to contact a reference librarian with any questions.
