Hearings are used to find out how administration officials feel about legislation and for selected political interest groups and private individuals to have an opportunity to give testimony. Most but not all hearings are printed. Indexes contain summaries of all committee hearings and allow searching by subject of the hearing, name of subcommittee, name of witnesses, and bill numbers. Full text of all published hearings are available in either paper copy or microfiche in the Documents Collection. If testimony is available electronically, there will be a hypertext link as part of the citation in the Library catalog Committee prints Committee staff members are sometimes asked to prepare background studies of issues before Congress called committee prints.
Indexes contain summaries of all committee prints and allow searching by subject, name and title.
All committee prints are available in either paper copy or microfiche in the Documents Collection. Committee reports When committees send approved bills to the House or Senate, they also send a report to explain the purpose of the bill, review past congressional actions on the subject, and set forth the reasons a bill should be passed. Reports are available in the Documents Collection in paper or microfiche from the beginning of Congressional reports to the present. J11R5 8th floor Congressional Record is online from 1995 to the present. CRFilter is a free web-based information tracer for the text of the Congressional Record.