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Calendars of the U.S. House of Representatives and History of Legislation: Search Tips

Sample Searches | Identification Codes

Sample Searches (4)

The following sample searches are provided as guides to popular types of searches in the Calendars of the U.S. House of Representatives and History of Legislation. Unless otherwise indicated, the searches are performed in the House Calendar for the 108th Congress. For the sake of space, only the top three hits in each results list are included with each example below.

Note: The results of these sample searches are described as they appear on the Web interface. The display of the results may vary for users of the WAIS client and SWAIS software.

Subject | Bill Number | Popular Title | Bills in Conference

1. Search by Subject

This 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.

Query:	education
Results:	H.Cal. (Month?9) HOUSE BILLS
	H.Cal. (Month?12) HOUSE RESOLUTIONS
	H.Cal. (Month?17) REPORTED BILLS AND RESOLUTIONS WHICH HAVE BEEN REFERRED TO COMMITTEES

2. Search by Bill Number

This 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.

Query:	"h.r.4"
Results:	H.Cal. (Month?12) HOUSE RESOLUTIONS
	H.Cal. (Month?20) INDEX OF SHORT TITLES
	H.Cal. (Month?9) HOUSE BILLS

3. Search by Popular Name

This type of search returns documents based on the popular title of a bill. In the House Calendar, popular titles are referred to as "short titles," and they are listed in the "Index of Short Titles." The "Index of Short Titles" lists the popular title of an act along with its bill number(s); it appears in the issue for the first legislative day of each week that the House is in session.

Query:	"national amber alert"
Results:	H.Cal. (Month?20) INDEX OF SHORT TITLES
	H.Cal. (Month?22) INDEX

Note: In the Senate Calendar, popular titles are referred to as "brief titles" in "Bills in Conference" and as "short titles" in "Status of Appropriation Bills."

4. Search by Bills In Conference

This type of search returns the "Bills in Conference" section of the House Calendar.

Query:	"bills in conference"
Results:	H.Cal. (Month?18) BILLS IN CONFERENCE
	H.Cal. (Month?19) BILLS THROUGH CONFERENCE
	H.Cal. (Month?1) TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note: To search both calendars at the same time, submit the query on the multi-database search page while the appropriate databases are highlighted in the scroll box.

Identification Codes

In the list that displays your query results, the title of each House Calendar document is preceded by an identification code. All of the House Calendar identification codes include the database abbreviation "H.Cal." for House Calendar.

Database	Identification Code
108th Congress Daily House Calendar	H.Cal. (Month?9) HOUSE BILLS
107th Congress Final House Calendar	107th Congress Final H.Cal. HOUSE BILLS
106th Congress Final House Calendar	106th Congress Final H.Cal. HOUSE BILLS
104th Congress Final House Calendar	104th Congress Final H.Cal.: HOUSE BILLS

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

Last updated: February 1, 2005
Page Name: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/calendars/house/tips.html