Related
Links
Links Courtesy
of The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress (ACSC)
Biographical
Directory of the U.S. Congress
This site gives online access to the Biographical Directory of
the U.S. Congress, with entries for all who have served in the
House or the Senate, as well as updated versions of the House
and Senate guides to research collections and bibliographies of
Senators. The House Legislative Resource Center maintains the
site and is preparing bibliographies of House members.
C-SPAN
Online
Viewers of C-SPAN's cable TV coverage of the proceedings of the
House and Senate and public affairs programming know the quality
and impartiality of coverage for which C-SPAN has earned a much
deserved reputation. C-SPAN Online continues this fine tradition.
C-SPAN Online provides online lesson plans, special features,
a glossary of congressional terms, frequently asked questions
about the Capitol, the activities of the C-SPAN School Bus, and C-SPAN
in the Classroom. C-SPAN
Lesson Plans provide teachers with interesting and useful
classroom tools. This site, already among the very best on the
Internet, is getting better all the time.
Center
for Legislative Archives, National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives is the official repository of the records
of House and Senate committees. If you are interested in learning
how to access the records of Congress, this site is the place
to begin. Particularly valuable are the online guides to the committee
records of the House and Senate, which provide excellent summaries
of the history and purpose of each congressional committee. This
site also has links to other sites of interest to students, historians,
archivists, and political scientists.
Congressional
Committee Meetings Index
The Congressional Bibliographies compiled at the NCSU Libraries
has introduced a new feature, the U.S. Congressional Committee
Meetings Index, available at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/congbibs The Meetings Index is a searchable database of the committee meeting
descriptions found in the Congressional Record's Daily Digest
sections. From its search page you may query a database of 57,000
Senate and House committee meeting records that begins with the
99th Congress (1985-86) and continues to the present. New records
will be added to the Meetings Index monthly.
Congressional
Mega Sites
This Library of Congress Internet Resource Page is a clearinghouse
of other sites related to Congress, including the House and Senate
Web pages; GPO Access, the U. S. Government Printing Office Home
Page with resources on Congressional publications; The
Congressional Record; and the Congressional
(Pictorial) Directory, which has photographs of all current
members of Congress. Also on this site are links to House and
Senate Web pages.
Congressional
Pictorial Directory
Provides brief biographical sketches of each member of the current
Congress and a picture of each member of the House and Senate.
The Congressional Pictorial Directory requires the use of the
Acrobat Reader in order to view the pictures. Conveniently, the
GPO site provides an easy way to download the Acrobat Reader at
no charge for use with any file in the Adobe Acrobat PDF format.
The
Congressional Record via GPO Access
The Congressional Record is a fascinating official daily record
of the floor proceedings of the House and Senate. It reports on
all floor debates, including material submitted by the members
in support of their positions on various bills and issues of the
day. The Congressional Record can be accessed from several places
on the Internet including the Library of Congress's THOMAS site. The U. S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is the publisher
of The Congressional Record, and offers an online searchable database
of it for 1995, 1996, and 1997. You may search a topic or search
for the floor speeches of individual members of the House or Senate.
User-friendly.
Congressional
Research Service Reports
The Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C., Inc. (LLSDC)
makes available on its Legislative Source Book Web site a new
Web page entitled "Selected Congressional Research Service
Reports on Congress and Its Procedures" which includes some
36 alphabetically arranged CRS reports, most of which have never
before been made available on the Web. The site also links to
most all other CRS Reports on the Internet as well as proposed
current and past federal legislation that requires CRS reports
to be made available on the Internet. The bulk of the reports
on the new site were optically scanned into PDF documents from
paper copies.
Congressional
Sources on the Internet
This site contains links to some of the best Web sites on Congress.
A notable feature of interest to researchers is its listing of
collections of congressional papers held at various archival repositories
across the country. This list features the private and personal
papers of former House and Senate members listed alphabetically
by the name of the institution holding the papers.
First
Federal Congress Project
One of the most interesting features of this site is an online
exhibit that covers fourteen topics related to the work and accomplishments
of the first Congress. The site will eventually have an online
teacher's guide but even in its present form it provides a wide
array of original sources, engravings, portraits, etc., all of
which are placed in historical context. This exhibit will help
users understand the critical role played by the First Federal
Congress in providing stability for the new government and completing
the work of the Constitutional Convention.
Government
Printing Office
This site offers a wealth of information about Congress, including
the following subparts:
Congressional
Bills
All published versions of bills from the 108th (2003-2004),
107th (2001-2002), 106th (1999-2000), 105th (1997-1998), 104th
(1995-1996) and 103rd (1993-1994) are available. The 107th Congress
database is updated by 6 a.m. daily when bills are published and
approved for release.
Congressional
Directory
Presents short biographies of each member of the Senate and
House, listed by state or district, and additional data, such
as committee memberships, terms of service, administrative staff,
and room and telephone numbers. It also lists officials of the
courts, military establishment, and other Federal departments
and agencies, including DC government officials, governors of
states and territories, foreign diplomats, and members of the
media.
Congressional
Hearings
A limited number are available, but there is a search feature.
Congressional
Record
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings
and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily
when Congress is in session. Helpful Hints provide instructions
for searching the Congressional Record database, 1995-current.
The index to the Congressional Record is at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cri/index.html
Congressional
Reports
Contains House, Senate, and executive reports, 104th Congress
to present.
History
of Bills
Lists legislative actions on bills that are reported in the
Congressional Record, 1983-present.
Public
Laws.
Contains laws signed by the President, 1995-present.
The
Hill
Capitol Hill is the most important small town in the world, whose
100 Senators, 435 House Members and 40,000 aides affect the lives
of individuals and businesses throughout the world. The Hill's
targeted circulation includes these influential 40,535 residents
plus the executive branch, cabinet departments, the news media,
trade associations, public-interest groups and lobbyists. The
Hill reports and analyzes the actions of Congress as it struggles
to reconcile the needs of those it represents with the legitimate
needs of the administration, lobbyists and the news media. We
explain the pressures confronting policy-makers, and the many
ways - often unpredictable - that decisions are made. But Capitol
Hill is more than the focal point of the legislative branch of
government. It is also a community not unlike a small city, and
The Hill reports on its culture, social life, crime, employment,
traffic, education, discrimination, shopping, dining, travel and
recreation.
The
Library of Congress
All students and teachers should be familiar with this site. While
the Library of Congress location does not focus on Congress the
way THOMAS (see below) does, it offers students of history and
government interesting places. The
American Memory project is bringing online important congressional
records and publications. "A
Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation" is a web site
designed to make these records more accessible to students, scholars,
and interested citizens, and it will bring together the records
and acts of Congress from the Journals of the Continental Congress
through The Congressional Globe, which ceased publication in 1873.
Documents dated 1774-1805 are currently available. Additional
materials will be added to the site every few months. Educators
also will find useful resources on The
Learning Page, including a teaching unit, In
Congress Assembled, and information on presidents and presidential
inaugurations. The Library of Congress Home Page also provides
research tools, including the incomparable catalog of the Library
of Congress, and links to other Library of Congress Internet resources.
Special collections include material on the Continental Congress
and the Constitutional Convention; Votes for Women, 1848-1921;
and African American Perspectives, 1818-1907. Photographic collections
include Civil War Photographs, Portraits of Presidents and First
Ladies, and Washington as It Was, 1923-1959.
Office
of the Clerk
U.S. House of Representatives
At this site, you can obtain copies of bills and other House documents,
find historical information about the House, and learn about the
services provided by the Office of the Clerk. The Clerk maintains,
for example, a brief biography of every former Member which includes
a bibliography and photographs or illustrations.
Roll
Call On Line
Roll Call covers the inside stories on events in Congress and
on Capitol Hill, ranging from the best of in-depth reporting to
rumors and gossip. The newspaper is widely read by everyone on
Capitol Hill and by those who closely follow the workings of Congress.
Roll Call Online Home Page provides some of the features and the
flavor of the newspaper and includes late breaking news, contests
and quizzes, and profiles of freshmen members of Congress. If
you want to know what Capitol Hill is like from its own neighborhood
newspaper, this site is a good place to begin.
Speaker.gov
Hosted by the current Speaker of the House of Representatives,
this site has information about the history, duties, and selection
of the Speaker.
THOMAS
Named in honor of Thomas Jefferson, this site is the best single
source of online information about Congress. THOMAS, a service
of the U. S. Congress, is maintained by the Library of Congress.
It offers a wide range of materials, including current activities
of the House and Senate, access to major bills under consideration
or recently enacted into law, the text of the daily Congressional
Record for the past five years, information on House and Senate
committees, legislative workload statistics back to the 91st Congress,
historical documents such as the Constitution and the Federalist
Papers, information on the legislative process in the House and
Senate, and links to other government sites related to Congress,
the executive branch, the judicial branch, and state and local
government. Users of CongressLink will find that we refer often
to the resources on THOMAS.
U.S.
Congressional Bibliographies
This site may be mis-named. It consists of comprehensive lists
of hearings, prints, and publications printed by the Senate, 1983
to present. For the House, it lists committee meetings recorded
in the Congressional Record's Daily Digest, 1985 to present. The
site also has compiled productivity measures of various sorts.
U.
S. House of Representatives
Just as the House and Senate are different, although closely related,
institutions, the Web sites of the House and Senate also differ.
The House site focuses on current events and activities of the
House, including schedules for floor activity and for House committees.
The House site provides links to the House leaders' offices, the
Library of Congress, C-SPAN, and other related locations. You
can learn how to write to your representative, and if you do not
know who your representative is, that person can be found by supplying
your zip code. The House site also supplies information of interest
to visitors to the Capitol, including an online tour of the Capitol
building. For the precedents that guide rulings on floor debate
and procedures, consult the online version of Hind's
Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States.
U.
S. Legislative Branch
is another very useful service of the Library of Congress.
Links
Courtesy of The Association of Centers for the Study of Congress
(ACSC)
