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Related Resources at the Library
Congressional Record “Document”
When following a Congressional Record page number link in either the Bill Summary & Status files or the Congressional Record Index files, it is sometimes difficult to locate the text relevant to your topic because of the way a "document" is defined by the Government Printing Office (GPO), whose electronic files are the "raw material" of the THOMAS Congressional Record full text files. A GPO "document" is the basic unit(s) returned from a page number link.
A "document" is defined as a part of the record between Bodoni dashes -- a Bodoni dash is a printing device in the printed record that appears as an elongated diamond. This Bodoni dash is used to separate logical breaks in congressional proceedings. These documents may be very short (e.g., a member's tribute to a noteworthy constituent, an announcement of a congressional appointment, the announcement time of the next day's meeting of the House or Senate), or very long (e.g., the text of a long bill or report inserted in the Record or a lengthy debate on a bill).
Thus, several short documents may appear on one page of the printed record, or one document may span up to hundreds of pages.
Selecting a Congressional Record page number link in either the Bill Summary & Status or Congressional Record Index files in THOMAS will result in one of several displays based on this definition of a "document."
Short Document Display
If more than one document or part of a document appears on a page, a title will be returned for each document. The documents returned will either begin, end or begin and end on that page of the Congressional Record.
Usually, but not always, you can determine the document relevant to your topic by examining the titles. If the document title is not definitive, you may have to select each document and examine its contents. For short documents, selecting the title will result in the display of the full text of the document as it appears in the record.
Long Document Display
If the page number you are interested in is part of a much longer document, which spans a number of pages, you will be presented with a list of "subheadings" for that document. Subheadings may be in the form of descriptive titles, member names (to mark where a member is speaking on the floor) or page numbers that mark the start of a page in the printed pecord.
A typical display for a longer record document may look like this part of the list of subheadings for the beginning of the debate on the defense appropriations bill in the 104th Congress:
Beginning
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 1997
[Page S8065]
AMENDMENT NO. 4492
Mr. HARKIN
Mr. HARKIN
Mr. STEVENS
[Page S8066]
Mr. STEVENS
Mr. FORD
Rollcall Vote No. 198 Leg.
Mr. STEVENS
Mr. GRAMM
Mr. LEVIN
AMENDMENT NO. 4893
Mr. LEVIN
Mr. STEVENS
Mr. FORD
Rollcall Vote No. 199 Leg.
Mr. STEVENS
Mr. INOUYE
B-52 MODIFICATIONS AMENDMENT
Mr. STEVENS
HARRISBURG INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
[Page S8067]
Use the “Find” command of your Web browser to search for the desired page number and/or member name, or topic in that document, and select the link to be taken to the text of your item.