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Return to Sear ch Page | Go to Search Tips Searching Questions
Content Questions
Technical Questions
Searching QuestionsHow do I search this database? Additional examples and tips are found in the Search Tips page. You may search for any term in the complete records found in the "Daily Digest" meetings sections. You may limit term searches to these specific elements within the records: SEARCH ALL Years, Committees and
Meetings Note that you are not required to enter a term in any of the search categories found in the drop-down search boxes. If you like, you may obtain results using only the following limit features. Narrow Searches For example, using the limit features in the 'Narrow Search' section you can obtain a set of meetings held by Senate committees from June 1 through June 20, 2002. You can ask for a set of all meetings, that are not hearings, held by House committees from 1985 to date. What data will I receive from a search? You will retrieve all the information contained in the "Daily Digest" entries for the meetings that match the criteria you have chosen. A unique feature of this resource is its ability to search multiple years of the "Daily Digest," and to display complete Digest records for selected criteria. Content QuestionsWhy should I search this resource? Much of the work of the U.S. Congress occurs in committees. The daily Congressional Record, in addition to its verbatim transcription of the debates of the House and Senate, briefly notes meetings held by Senate, House, and Joint committees in a section called the "Daily Digest." The Meetings Index provides flexible, searchable access to this meeting information. What kind of information is included in this resource? The NCSU Libraries extracts the abstracts of the committee meetings reported in the "Daily Digests," beginning with the 99th Congress (1985 to the present); reformats these entries into XML records; indexes them; and makes them available via this interface. What is the source of the committee meetings records? The source of these records is the server, Thomas, at the Library of Congress. What Congresses can I search here? This site indexes the "Daily Digest" meeting entries beginning with the 99th Congress (1985-1986). Coverage continues to the present time. Our goal is to upload new records twice a month. To determine the most recent records in the index, limit a search to the records for the current year. Next search for records from some beginning point through today's date. The records are displayed in reverse chronological order, with those from the most recent day in the index displaying at the top of the file. How does the information here help me find the full texts of the meetings, or the documents, referenced in the index? Several kinds of government documents are referenced in the Congressional Committee Meetings Index. Use the subjects and dates of material of interest to locate the complete text of these documents from the resources given below. Public Hearings comprise a large percentage of the
meetings
referenced in the index.
Many recent hearings (1997 to present) are available electronically on the
web. Access them through these links: The Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications is the most complete bibliography of published Congressional hearings. There are other unprinted hearings not released to the public, some for national security reasons. The Congressional Bibliographies website identifies Senate hearings (1993 to present) that are not publicly available. Committee Reports are often referenced in the index. Reports are available from Thomas at the Library of Congress. References to Bills are also found in the index. Use
these
Thomas links and the numbers of specific Bills to locate more information
about them: The meetings sections of "Daily Digest" issues on Thomas contain links to referenced Reports and Bills. It has not been possible to retain those links in the descriptions that appear here in the U.S. Congressional Committee Meetings Index. Technical QuestionsHow are the Daily Digest meetings descriptions converted into database records? New meeting records are appended to the current year's House and Senate digest files, and are first uploaded to annual cumulative digest web pages on the Congressional Bibliographies site. These are text files containing the digest information for all committee meetings held in a year. Senate and Joint meetings are linked from a page entitled Lists by Congress. House meetings are all accessible from the main House Meetings page. The U.S. Congressional Committee Meetings Index involves a two-step manipulation of the meetings' summary records obtained from the "Daily Digest." Example: 1. This is a sample entry in the format downloaded from Thomas, and available from the annual cumulative Digest pages on this site:
2. Meeting records are converted into indexable form in two steps. The first is a manual manipulation of the data into this format:
3. Computer scripts process these "regularized" records and perform two tasks. First the record is examined for the occurrence of the word "hearing" or "hearings," and the dummy D field is changed to Yes/No, the record represents a hearing. Next the record is parsed into XML format, and this record is used to index the meeting.
What software is being used to index and query the data? The U.S. Congressional Committee Meetings Index data is stored in XML format in an Oracle database. To index the bibliographic data we are using a software product from BlueAngel Technologies called MetaStar Server. We are using another BlueAngel software product called MetaStar Gateway to search the data. The Gateway product is implemented in Java and interfaces with some of the most popular web servers. Are there any known data and software quirks? TITLE TRANSCRIPTIONS Titles from "Daily Digest" records are displayed in ALL CAPS, including characters that Thomas shows in lower case. Examples: NASA's EARTH OBSERVING SYSTEMS is entered with a capital
"S" in VARIANT SPELLINGS Committee and Subcommittee names appear in the database in the form that they are recorded in Thomas, and some variations in form appear. Examples include "Veterans Affairs," "Veterans' Affairs," and in subcommittee names, "VA." Users are cautioned to consider variants of search terms, particularly committee and subcommittee name variations or abbreviations. |
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