| Finding Congressional Hearings | More Tips | |||||||||
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| Looking for a Congressional hearing? This guide will help you locate historic and modern hearings in both fiche and print formats. While the Law Library owns quite a few bound hearings, the library also has a large collection of hearings in microfiche. However, these fiche holdings only begin with 1970, so be sure to check the fiche and print collections at the Government Documents & Information Center at Mudd Library to fill the gap.
Once you have located a citation for your hearing, check the chart below to see the available format and library location.
The bound hearings are located on the Upper East Side on the two upper shelves on the left. Committees are arranged alphabetically within a chronological arrangement. House, Senate, and Joint Committee hearings are separated as well. To learn more about locating a citation for a hearing click here. Understanding CIS Accession Numbers Don't be discouraged when you discover that the Congressional hearing you are looking for is only in microfiche format with some complicated citation. Locating your hearing can be just as easy as finding a book on the shelf provided you understand the Congressional Information Service (CIS) accession number system. When you locate a citation to a Congressional hearing via Congressional Universe or CIS/Index one of these numbers will be included in that citation. Basically, the good people at CIS assign accession numbers to publications each year according to the issuing body and publication type. Each number begins with a three-character code base. The first letter indicates the parent body: H for House, J for Joint, and S for Senate. The next two digits identify the committee office or special category which issued the publication. For example, all documents concerning the Senate Finance Committee begin with "S36." A final digit is added to this base to indicate the publication type: 0=House or Senate document or special publication, 1=hearing, 2=committee print, 3=House or Senate report, 4=Senate executive report, and 5=Senate treaty document. So, for example, S361 represents a Senate Finance Committee hearing volume. A sequential number assigned as publications are produced is added to this base number. So, let's put it all together: S361-14 is the 14th hearing of the Senate Finance Committee abstracted by CIS within a given year. Now that you understand the accession number, head down to the Microform Room to locate your fiche. Use the red binders to locate the correct cabinet. |