Government Documents News

More than 100,000 MARC records for the LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection, 1824-2003, have been loaded into Orbis, the Yale Library catalog.

Congressional hearings are among the most heavily used materials in Yale’s U.S. federal government documents collection.

To give you a flavor of the range of subject matter covered in hearings, here are the titles of just three hearings held on April 5 in years past:

• Nonconsensual recording of telephone conversations: hearings before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-eighth Congress, second session on H.R. 4826 ... March 8 and April 5, 1984.

• Ocean dumping of waste materials: hearings before the Subcommittee on Fisheries and Wildlife Conservation and the Subcommittee on Oceanography of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representatives, Ninety-second Congress, first session ... April 5, 6, 7, 1971.

• Taxpayer beware: schemes, scams, and cons : hearing before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, One Hundred Seventh Congress, first session on IRS oversight, April 5, 2001.

To learn more about what hearings are and where they fit into the legislative process, check out the Yale Government Documents & Information Center's guide to legislative information.

Yale Library has purchased online editions of two CQ Press publications:

Guide to U.S. Elections, 6th edition
Vital Statistics on American Politics, 2009-2010

Both can be searched with the other titles in the CQ Press Electronic Library, which is a great resource for researching Congress, public policy, and legislation.