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Congressional Hearings: Search Tips

Sample Searches | Catalog of Available Documents | Identification Codes

Sample Searches (2)

The following sample searches are provided as guides to searching the Congressional Hearings databases. For the sake of space, only the top three hits in each results list are included with each example below.

1. Search by Subject

This type of search returns documents that are related to specific word(s) that you enter as your search term(s). They may appear anywhere within the document.

Query:	"drug interdiction"
Alternative:	drug ADJ interdiction
Results:	[105th Congress House Hearings] OVERSIGHT OF THE U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE
	[105 Sen. Hrgs.] TREASURY AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT APPROPRIATIONS
	[105 Sen. Hrgs.] U.S. AND MEXICAN COUNTERDRUG EFFORTS SINCE

2. Search by Date

This type of search returns hearings based on a specified date. As in a general subject search, the date may appear anywhere in the document, as the date of the hearing or as a reference within the course of the proceedings.

Query:	"october 1998"
Alternative:	october ADJ 1998
Results:	[105th Congress House Hearings] THE CONSEQUENCES OF PERJURY AND
	[105th Congress House Hearings] INSPECTOR GENERAL AUDIT OF HEALTH CARE
	[105 Sen. Hrgs.] THE YEAR 2000 TECHNOLOGY PROBLEM: PENSIONS AND

Catalog of Available Documents

To view a current catalog of Congressional Hearings available via GPO Access, choose House and/or the Senate, and click on the "submit" button on the search page without having entered any query terms and then select the appropriate document from the results list.

Identification Codes

In the list that displays your query results, the title of each Congressional Hearings document is preceded by an identification code. The identification code contains two elements: a Congress number and a database abbreviation. For example, in the listing "[105 Sen. Hrgs.] NOMINEES TO AFRICAN COUNTRIES," "105" indicates that the hearing is from the 105th Congress, "Sen. Hrgs." stands for Senate hearings, and "NOMINEES TO AFRICAN COUNTRIES" is the title of the document. The phrase "Congress House Hearings" replaces "Sen. Hrgs." for House documents in the database section of the identification code.

Identification codes for the House and Senate appropriations hearings include the name(s) of the agency (or agencies) receiving the appropriation, the fiscal year of the appropriation, and a part number for that document, as in the following example: "[VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Appropriations for 1998 - Part 8]."

A service of the U.S. Government Printing Office.

Last updated: September 28, 2005
Page Name: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/chearings/tips.html