Getting Started With Your Research

Committee Reports

Committees often publish reports on legislation or investigations, which you can find in the U.S. Congressional Serial Set. The Serial Set also serves as a repository for anything the U.S. Congress wants to publish and disseminate including, but not limited to, annual reports from executive agencies, agency reports mandated by legislation, Presidential Messages, and even articles or reports from non-government organizations.

A digital version of the Serial Set is searchable through subscription databases such as ProQuest Congressional or HeinOnline. You can check with local academic or law libraries for access. You can also find print copies of the Serial Set volumes at many Federal Depository Libraries.

Additionally, the Government Publishing Office (GPO), in collaboration with the Law Library of Congress, is working on a multi-year project to digitize all of the volumes of the Serial Set. It is still a work in progress, but GPO is uploading the digitized volumes to GovInfo for public access as they become available.

Committee Hearings

Many committee hearing transcripts are published. The most comprehensive way to search for published hearings is through the ProQuest Congressional Hearings Digital Collection—a module within the larger ProQuest Congressional subscription database. The Hearings Digital Collections database contains all published transcripts and most unpublished transcripts (through the 1980s). If you can’t access this database through a local academic or law library, we suggest contacting the Law Library of Congress.

If a subscription database is not available to you, many congressional hearing transcripts are freely available online through sites like Google Books, or through digital libraries such as HathiTrust Digital Library or the Internet Archive.

The Law Library of Congress has research guides on both How to Locate a Published Congressional Hearing and How to Locate an Unpublished Congressional Hearing.

Congressional Record (1873 - Present)

The Congressional Record (CR) is a publication containing the proceedings and debates held on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The CR includes verbatim speeches, votes, a record of petitions referred, a record of Executive Communication (EC) numbers, Treaty Document numbers, and records of all legislation introduced each session of Congress.

At the end of each Congress, all of the daily editions of the CR are collected, re-paginated, and re-indexed into a permanent, bound edition. Each bound edition includes an Index, which consists of two parts: an Index to the proceedings and a History of Bills and Resolutions. The Index to proceedings is arranged alphabetically by subject or by the name of a member of Congress. The History of Bills and Resolutions section is separated into Senate bills and House bills, and is arranged by bill and resolution number. The History of Bills and Resolutions is a great tool to identify a bill or resolution number, the committee(s) that had jurisdiction over a bill, and a bill's final disposition.

You can access and search both the daily edition and the bound edition of the CR freely online using Congress.gov and GovInfo. The CR is also available through HeinOnline, a subscription database available at National Archives research locations and at many academic institutions or law libraries.

Predecessors to the Congressional Record (1789 - 1873)

The predecessor publications to the Congressional Record (CR) include the Annals of Congress (1789-1824), the Register of Debates (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873). These early proceedings can help you track legislation, petitions, and votes—and they do provide some level of congressional debate, but you won’t see the verbatim transcription found in the CR until the 1850s.

These predecessor publications are available through Congress.gov. Use the "Browse" feature at the top of the page, and then select a specific Congress from the drop down menu. Once you've selected a Congress, scroll down the page to find links to PDFs under the "Debates of Congress" heading.

There are other options to browse or search the predecessor publications through Congress.gov. For example, the Annals of Congress Page Headings, the Register of Debates Index, and the Congressional Globe Index are all good access points for each respective publication.

For more help on navigating either the CR or its predecessors, the Law Library of Congress offers a periodic orientation webinar to Congress.gov.

Journals of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate

The Journals are the constitutionally mandated record of proceedings of the U.S. Congress. For earlier congresses, they are often more comprehensive than the predecessor publications to the Congressional Record (CR) described above. We recommend researchers start with the Journals when looking for pre-1873 petitions, votes, or bills. However, if you’re researching 1873 to Present, the CR will be a more comprehensive publication.

You can search the Journals using Congress.gov. Use the homepage search bar to search by keyword. Choose “All Congresses” from the drop down menu. On the left-hand side of your search results, you can filter by publication (Journals) and by date (Congress). You can also download PDFs of the Journals using the "Browse" feature at the top of the page—this can be helpful if you have a specific citation or are searching for a specific date.

Senate Executive Journal

The U.S. Senate maintains a separate record of proceedings for nominations and treaties called the Senate Executive Journal (SEJ). You can access the SEJ for the 1st through 43rd Congresses using Congress.gov. Later publications are available online through HathiTrust Digital Library, or you can find print copies at your local Federal Depository Library.