Library Guides: U.S. Government : Legislative Branch: Documents

Documents

House and Senate documents are the class of publications issued by congressional committees or the full House or Senate:

Presidential messages proposing new legislation or vetoing legislation passed by Congress
special reports of executive branch agencies
congressional committee activity reports
committee-sponsored special studies
background information published as official documents rather than committee prints
annual reports of certain patriotic and veterans groups
memorial tributes
compilations of background information related to annual intercollegiate and high school debate topics

Congressional This link opens in a new window
Use the left menu in Advanced Search to find House and Senate Documents back to 1817.
Congressional provides access to the best web resources for congressional and legislative information. This includes services available to Penn State Users only, such as Congressional Universe (1789-to date) as well as other free services that provide similar or related information such as Thomas (1993-to date) and GPO Access (1993-to date). The Guided Tour provides a step-by-step approach to congressional and legislative information for users who have never done research of this type before. Updates:Continuous

ProQuest Congressional
Use this ProQuest LibGuide to learn to research congressional documents in ProQuest Congressional.

Legislative Insight This link opens in a new window
Use this Libraries' database to find digital full text publications created by Congress during the process leading up to the enactment of U.S. Public Laws.
Proquest Legislative Insight is a legislative history service offering full-text PDF versions of publications generated by the United States Congress during the legislative process from 1929 to the present. The publications include the full text of the Public Law, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, committee hearings, reports, and prints. Also included are Presidential signing statements, CRS reports, and miscellaneous congressional publications.

Legislative Insight (ProQuest)
Use this ProQuest LibGuide to learn to effectively search Legislative Insight.
Congressional Documents
Find Congressional Documents back to the 94th Congress [1975-1976].

Follows the pattern:

[Chamber abbreviation] Doc.[Congress number] - [Document number]

H. Doc. 114-27 stands for the 27th House Document of the 114th Congress (2015-2016)

S. Doc. 112-3 stands for the 3rd Senate Document of the 112th Congress (2011-2012)