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About the Congressional Record | Congressional Record Search Help | Navigating the Search Results for the Congressional Record | Find Relevant Sections of a Congressional Record Document
The Congressional Record Index is an alphabetic listing of topics, names of members of Congress, and names of other people and organizations referenced in the Congressional Record, along with the page numbers in the Record on which those topics or names are discussed.
Searching the Congressional Record Index
Once your search results have been returned, click on a topic heading to see the full index entry containing one or more of your highlighted search word(s). For long entries, scroll down or use the Find command of your browser to pinpoint the relevant lines which contain your word or phrase, followed by a reference to a Congressional Record page or a bill which concerns your search.
Selecting a bill reference will result in a page containing links to all versions of that bill from the current Congress. If there is only one version of the bill, the full display (either text or table of contents) will be displayed without an intermediate "bill versions" page.
Selecting a page reference will retrieve: (1) all documents which appeared on that page of the printed Record OR (2) one document containing a range of pages within the Congressional Record in which your cited page appears.
If (1) is true -- a list of titles of a few short documents appearing on that page is returned -- select the document with the more likely title to view. (If the titles are not definitive, you may have to examine several to find the relevant document.)
If (2) is true -- one document containing a range of pages is returned -- scroll down or use the Find command of your browser to look for your page number. Select the page number link to see the text relevant to your topic.
Browsing the Congressional Record Index
You can locate index terms by browsing, from the top-level Congressional Record Index page, the alphabetic range which contains your topic. After you select the correct range, the next-level range will be displayed, containing a list of 100 index topics in that range. By scrolling or using the Find command of your browser, locate the desired term and click on it. The full index entry, describing Congressional Record documents indexed to that term, will be displayed.
Each term display contains references to bills and page citations in the Congressional Record. Selecting a bill reference will result in a page containing links to all versions of that bill. If there is only one version of the bill, the full display (either text or table of contents) will be presented without an intermediate "bill versions" page. Clicking on a page reference will retrieve either (1) all documents from the Congressional Record text database which appeared on that page in the Record OR (2) one document spanning a range of pages within the Congressional Record in which your desired page appears.
Tips for Finding Relevant Sections of a Congressional Record Document