 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
Congressional Record: Search TipsBrowse the Daily Digest
| Retrieve a Congressional Record Page Browse the Daily DigestThe browse feature allows you to view the Daily Digest from the previous day's Congressional Record. Below that, you will find an archive of previous Daily Digests, from the beginning of the 109th Congress forward. The Daily Digest serves as a table of contents for the House and Senate actions reported in that issue and for the statements published in the Extensions of Remarks. It is available in two formats: ASCII text and PDF files. Simply click on a link to open it. Retrieve a Congressional Record PageIf you know the year/volume and page number of the Congressional Record document that you want to retrieve, you may bypass the traditional method of searching by using the specialized Retrieve a Congressional Record Page feature. First, select the year/volume by clicking on the corresponding radio button. Only one year/volume may be accessed in a single retrieval; the default is the current year/volume. Next, type the page number you wish to retrieve in the appropriate box. Tables that contain ranges for the House, Senate, Extensions of Remarks, and Daily Digest pages in each issue are available for Congressional Record volumes from 1998 to the present. Finally, click on the "submit" button. Pages are available as PDF files only.
Page Numbers by Congressional Record Section: The Congressional Record is divided into four separate parts. The page numbers of each part are numbered consecutively beginning with page one when each session of Congress convenes. The page numbers of each of these parts are identified with a "folio prefix" as follows:
The Daily Digest lists page numbers of the important actions taking place in the chambers of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. Using the "copy-and-paste" method, page numbers from the listings of Congressional Record Page Numbers for the 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 issues of the Congressional Record can be used in conjunction with this page to permit browsing those issues in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). The Extensions of Remarks includes matter submitted by Members for publication in the Congressional Record. The last page of each session's Daily Digest lists submitting Members' names and includes the beginning page number to assist users in locating this matter. Fielded SearchesA fielded-search page is provided for Congressional Record databases from 1995 to the present. Fielded searches allow you to make your search more specific by limiting your results by preselected elements, such as issue, section, and date. The fields for the Congressional Record databases are as follows: Issue: 1995 to the present Section: Daily Digest, Extensions of Remarks, House Section, Senate Section, and Lobby List [1]
Issue Date: Date Range, On, Before, and After To select or deselect a field, click on the appropriate box or circle. You may search one or multiple issues (years) and/or sections with a single query. However, you may choose only one option in regard to the issue date. Queries that do not specify a field will perform a search of the entire database. Note: The fielded-search page automatically defaults to the current year. If you do not wish to search this year, you must deselect the corresponding volume checkbox. Fielded searches are not available for the 1994 Congressional Record database. In order to find a document in this database, you must perform a simple search from the multi-database search page. Scroll down the list of databases, click on "Congressional Record, Volume 140 (1994)," and then enter your search terms in the appropriate box. Sample Searches (5)The following sample searches are provided as guides to popular types of searches in the Congressional Record databases. Unless otherwise indicated, the searches are performed in the 1998 Congressional Record database. For the sake of space, only the top three hits in each results list are included with each example below. Note: Whenever you enter a query, make sure that you deselect any default settings that may interfere with your search. The Congressional Record online database automatically defaults to the current year's volume. Subject | Congressperson's Name | Bill Number | Roll-Call Vote | Page Number 1. Search by SubjectThis type of search returns documents that are related to a specific subject. The word(s) that you enter as your search term(s) may appear anywhere within the document.
2. Search by Member of Congress' NameThis type of search returns documents based on a Member of Congress' name. To make your search more specific, modify the query by also including a date, field, or subject.
As in a general subject search, the name(s) that you enter as your search term(s) may appear anywhere within the document. The results list does not differentiate among documents in which the Member of Congress is speaking and those in which s/he is spoken of. After you retrieve a document, you can tell that s/he is speaking if her/his name is written in all capital letters and aligned to the left of the page. (Performing a "find" search with your browser will allow you to make this determination more quickly and easily than reading through the text.) Note: In the Congressional Record, a Member of Congress is identified as Mr., Mrs., or Ms., not as Senator or Representative. 3. Search by Bill NumberThis type of search returns documents based on a given bill number. The bill number may be typed with or without punctuation. If no punctuation is used, you must leave a space between the "h" and the "r" for bills in the House.
The order of returned documents is determined by relevance ranking, not by chronology; this ranking accounts for the appearance of a Congressional Record document from March 3, 1998, in between two documents from March 4, 1998. 4. Search by Roll-Call VoteThis type of search returns documents that contain roll-call votes. If you know the number of the specific roll-call vote in which you are interested, you may search for it with a query such as "rollcall vote no 131". The search below illustrates how to search generally for roll-call votes related to a subject.
5. Search by Page NumberThis type of search returns documents that appear wholly or partially on a specified page. You must include the word "page" in your query in order to eliminate the return of documents that include the page number as a numeric reference within the text. In the Congressional Record, the page number is preceded directly by a letter, indicating the house with which that page is concerned; "S" refers to a Senate page, and "H" refers to a House page.
For documents that span more than one page, it is possible to find the full page range by consulting the heading in an ASCII text file or the "Go To Page" tool in the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Page breaks are indicated by separators (e.g., [[Page 825]]) in an ASCII text file or by a new page view in the Adobe Acrobat Reader; they may, as in a printed document, fall in the middle of a sentence. Note: Page numbers do not appear in the 1994 Congressional Record database. [1] A lobby list identifies individuals and organizations that lobby Congress and the clientele that those lobbyists represent. The list is based on disclosure forms filed with the Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate, and it is published in the Congressional Record quarterly, usually in February, May, August, and November. The three sections of the lobby list are registrations, quarterly reports for the most recent quarter, and quarterly reports from the prior quarter that were received too late for inclusion in the previous list. Identification CodesIn the list that displays your query results, the title of each Congressional Record document is preceded by an identification code. The identification code contains three elements: a database abbreviation, the issue date, and a section identifier. For example, in the identification code "cr20oc98H," "cr" stands for Congressional Record, "20oc98" is the issue date (October 20, 1998), and "H" indicates that the document is from the House section. The chart below contains all of the Congressional Record section identifiers.
While identification codes are helpful for identifying certain attributes of a document in your results list, they cannot be used for searching within a query. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
