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U.S. Congressional Documents

This collection features the complete Congressional Record Bound version, as well as the daily version back to 1980. It also includes the three predecessor titles, as well as other important congressional material.

Searching Content

Daily to Bound Locator

The Congressional Record Daily to Bound Locator tool allows you to quickly locate a page from the Congressional Record Daily within the bound volume or vice versa. NOTE: This tool does not provide coverage for all volumes. Please refer to the coverage information listed in the heading for detailed dates.

Select a date: Results will include a citation for the Daily and Bound Volumes broken out by chamber/section (House, Senate, Extension of Remarks, Daily Digest) for the chosen date.

Enter citation: Enter an exact citation and the results will return the corresponding citation for that section from either the Bound or Daily edition.

US Congressional Documents

Browse by Month and Year

When selecting a month and year, results will be shown in table format, displaying the citation to each section of the Daily and Bound volumes for each day of the chosen month.

US Congressional Documents

Search within the Serial Set

Easily search within the Serial Set by using various tools.

To use the structured Citation Lookup Tool on the left, enter the Document Type, Congress, and Document Number to quickly and easily locate a document without knowing the exact citation. For example to find a House report from the 111th Congress with a document number of 100, select the following from the drop-downs.

Alternatively, users may enter an accepted citation into the free-field citation lookup tool to the right for the same result. A free-field Volume quick locator tool also allows users to search for specific volumes within the Serial Set

For more informational on browsing the Serial Set, check out our Serial Set LibGuide!

US Congressional Documents

Browse Using Quick Finder Tools

The quick finder tool will allow you to browse and search by Congress, Document Type, Chamber, Committee, or Text and gives you the ability to broaden and narrow your search by each category. Your search results will display facets, allowing you to further refine your results. This searching tool is available for both "Congressional Hearings" and "Committee Prints."

This tool allows you to quickly search for a hearing by:

  • Congress -- Select a congress number, or choose Any Congress if you do not know which Congress the hearing was held in.
  • Chamber -- Select a chamber, House/Senate/Joint, or choose Any Chamber if you do not know which Chamber held the hearing.
  • Committee -- Select the committee that the hearing was held by, or choose Any Committee if you do not know the specific committee that held the hearing.
  • Text -- This serves as an advanced search box. Insert key terms within the hearing that you are looking for. 

image of the Congressional Hearings Quick Finder tool in U.S. Congressional Documents

image of a results page when using the Congressional Hearing Quick Finder tool in HeinOnline

Building a Search Query with Multiple Terms

Like all content in HeinOnline, the full text and metadata of U.S. Congressional Documents are fully searchable. Select the Advanced Search link located beneath the main search bar to perform a more specific search. Choose various metadata fields to search, such as Text, Section Date, Section Description, Volume Date, Section Author, Section Title, and Volume Title.

For example, perform an advanced search in the Congressional Record for a section of the transcript from the House Proceedings on April 30, 2003, in which Congressman Sessions spoke to the floor regarding the act entitled “Improving Education Results for Children with Disabilities Act of 2003,” introduced as bill H.R. 1350. 

image of searching within U.S. Congressional Documents advanced search optionsRefine your search by selecting Search within Results to find the references to the bill H.R. 1350.

image of the ability to modify your search within a search results page in HeinOnline

searching within results for a specific text in HeinOnline

results page after using the 'search within' option

Refining Your Search

A Congress member’s name, a word or phrase, or a roll call vote could get several hits on any given search. Therefore, it is recommended that you refine your search as much as possible in order to receive the most relevant results. The following provides you with a few examples of how to refine your search to get the most on-point results.

  1. Add a date range: Enter a begin and end year using the date fields below the title listing. When searching in the Congressional Record (Bound and/or Daily) and the Congressional Globe, you can also add a day, such as April 30, in the Section Description field.
  2. Add a section: Look for a specific section by entering “Senate”, “House”, “Extension”, or “Daily” in the Section Description field. To determine what other section descriptions may be available to search, open a volume and click on the table of contents. The text that is italicized in a section title is considered the “section description”. Some other examples include: index, proceedings and debates, appendix, title page, notes, and journals of Congress to name a few.
  3. Select a specific title: Choose a specific title from the title listing to search only that title (Congressional Globe, Congressional Record, American State Papers, etc.)
  4. Use facets to narrow your results: When search results appear, you will be offered facets which could include the document type, dates, titles, section type, or relevant people or locations, depending upon your initial search string. Use these to refine your results.

​​​​​​​image of faceting in a results page for HeinOnline