Quick Start: Congressional Basic   Tags: congressional, quick start guides  

The Congressional Basic Subscription covers abstracts and indexing for Hearings, Reports, Documents and Committee prints from 1970-present (there are links to HTML text from approximately the mid-1990s)

The Congressional basic subscription also covers all of the material searched from the other links on the left:  bill track, bill text, members and committee coverage, the Daily Congressional Record and the Code of Federal Regulations and Federal Register. 

The Historical Indexes cover material prior to 1970, though there is some overlap with the Basic subscription (the unpublished hearings collections stretch into the early 1980s).  The various series have different start dates; users can see these on the Advanced Search tab.

The Congressional basic subscription has abstracts and indexing to all publications and it includes links to an unofficial full text version of many congressional publications. The Congressional digital modules (and the fiche collections) offer a comprehensive collection of the official publications in addition to the abstracts and indexing.

The Content Coverage Chart (in Help) notes all the information available through PQ Congressional (and the other purchases) and notes the data source, the coverage, and which subscriptions/purchases make the information available.

The Help files are comprehensive. Help shows you:

• how to search the database
• about the publications
• about the legislative process, and
• how to cite the publications

There are also additional features such as the Congressional Session Dates and Major Laws to help you answer questions and come up with good search examples.

ProQuest Congressional is designed for a wide variety of users, from novice to advanced. We have developed various Congressional publications scenarios to help you in your searches. Click here and then go to the Help section to read different scenarios that will help you in your research.

Use the Basic Search form to retrieve Congressional information by performing keyword searches on congressional publication results records. Results records include titles and other bibliographic information, subject indexing, and abstracts where available. Using this form will return targeted results, finding records in which the search term represents a main theme.  Basic Search does not search the full text of the resources—it only searches abstracts, titles, indexing information, and other bibliographic data. 

Using the Advanced Search menu allows users to search within specific publication types. 

Using the Search by Number form, users can search by bill or public law number to find publications related to that legislation.