#gov docs

GPO, the Government Publishing Office and the Law Library of Congress released the first, totally free, online, publicly accessible version of the United States Congressional Serial Set collection on govinfo.gov. 

American as apple pie, the United States Congressional Serial Set, is not sexy but the content is oh so good. For years, only the most wealthy libraries located in public and private academic institutions and large public library districts with enough real estate could house tangible copies of the United States Congressional Serial Set in print format. When commercial vendors such as LexisNexis and Readex created and released the first online versions of the Serial Set in 2003, only the same wealthy libraries could afford to buy the product for their patrons to access. Then in 2018, HeinOnline another commercial vendor, released its version of the online Serial Set and its cost was more affordable to a greater number of libraries.

Ever mindful of James Madison's observation that "a popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both," Congress and the GPO have been answering the charge to make government information accessible to the public for more than two hundred years. As early as December 10, 1813, Timothy Pickering, a member of the House of Representatives from

Massachusetts, submitted a resolution for the purpose of distributing “one copy of the House and Senate Journals, House and Senate documents and reports to each University and College in each State, and one copy to the Historical society, incorporated, or which shall be incorporated in each state.” As libraries and colleges became more numerous, a designation system was established in 1857, whereby members of Congress could nominate a library of their choice to become a depository for Federal publications. Oberlin College was designated by the Honorable Philemon Bliss in March of that year. And in 1895, the Federal Depository Library Program was officially launched. Fast forward to 1994 with the advent of GPO Access, when the World Wide Web was beginning to bloom, the GPO began to steadily release newly issued government publications in online format. And within the last 8 years the GPO has stepped up the pace in digitizing some of the classic, treasures of American history.  The Serial Set is the latest release and it has created a buzz in the academic and research environment. Its release should create a buzz in the hearts of all Americans. It is free; anyone, anywhere with mobile or internet access can now view the Serial Set. There is no more need for John Q. Public to walk into a brick and mortar building and ask a librarian to point him in the right direction.  At last, America has moved into the direction that Madison hoped we would go -- making popular government information popular and, as a consequence, creating the pathway for the development of an informed citizenry.

What exactly is the Serial Set and why is it such a big deal? 

The Serial Set are the House and Senate reports and documents issued by the United States Congress. However, Executive department reports, including annual reports of the several executive agencies, and messages of the President to Congress are also contained in the Serial Set. Non-governmental publications such as Annual reports of the Boys Scouts, annual reports of Howard University, and the reports of the Daughters of the American Revolution are contained in the Serial Set. Statistics, maps, beautiful botanical illustrations and even compilations of the prayers offered by the House and Senate chaplains are all included in the Serial Set. The Serial Set is unsurpassed in its historical value for researching and understanding the American experience from the nation’s infancy to the present time.

Do you have an interest in the development of American education? How about the War of the Rebellion, more commonly known as the Civil War?  What about the Lewis and Clark expeditions or the sinking of the Titanic? You can find information about all these events in the Serial Set. No, you won't find too much about the wild wild west, only a passing mention of a "Billy the Kid, so called." Some of the more interesting content includes the early memorials and petitions against slavery; divorce petitions from residents of the District of Columbia to Congress, one of which caught my attention as it reported an adulterous interracial affair between a couple who had the audacity to flaunt their relationship in public. Hallmark pieces such as Senator Robert Bryd’s Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, the United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art and the various memorial tributes providing interesting biographical details of Senators, Representatives, Presidents, First Ladies and others are all part of the Serial Set.

To find out more about the Serial Set and what it contains, view the following resources:

McKinney, R. J. (rev. 2021). An overview of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set. Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C., Inc. https://www.llsdc.org/serial-set-volumes-guide#overview

McMullen, J. E. (2003). U.S. Congressional Serial Set Finding List. The College of Wooster Libraries. https://libguides.wooster.edu/c.php?g=124060&p=811705

Saunders, V. (1998) U.S. Congressional Serial Set: What it is and it's History.[Presentation, Depository Library Council/Federal Depository Conference in Arlington, Virginia]. https://www.fdlp.gov/about-fdlp/mission-history/u-s-congressional-serial-set-what-it-is-and-its-history

Sokol, D. (2019). Library of Congress and U. S. Government Publishing Office digitizing U. S. Congressional Serial Set. Library of Congress. https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2019/10/library-of-congress-and-u-s-government-publishing-office-digitizing-u-s-congressional-serial-set/

U.S. Government Publishing Office (2018, January 26). A brief history of the FDLP. https://www.fdlp.gov/about-fdlp/mission-history/a-brief-history-of-the-fdlp

This research guide demonstrates how to trace legislation from a provision in the U.S. Code back to the public laws, Statutes at Large, and bills that created it.

Any given provision in the current U.S. Code may be the product of multiple acts passed over a long period of time. So, how do you unpack the provision and discover the different acts that gave rise to a particular section of the Code? Tracing legislation from the Code back to the bills, public laws, and Statutes at Large that created it may seem daunting for the uninitiated, but we hope this research guide will help simplify the process.

Beginning Your Search with the United States Code and Source Credits

The first step in tracing a piece of legislation will be to look at the United States Code (“U.S. Code”) section of interest in a print or online resource.  For more information about where to find the U.S. Code in print and online, we suggest reviewing our previous post, “Federal Statutes: A Beginner’s Guide,” particularly the “The United States Code and Its Predecessors” section.

To determine which law created your U.S. Code section, and which law or laws may have amended the section over the years, you will want to look to the very end of the U.S. Code section for a series of citations enclosed in parentheses.  This group of citations is called a “source credit” or “source note,” and it lists all of the laws that have affected or created your U.S. Code section.  Each source credit will be laid out chronologically, with the first citation giving information about the public law that gave rise to the U.S. Code section, and each subsequent citation (separated by a semicolon) providing information about the public laws that amended the U.S. Code section.[1]

We want to be sure to note that, if you choose to use a free online resource for tracing purposes, there might not always be source credit information available.  As such, we suggest using the United States Code page provided by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives (OLRC), the organization that publishes the official U.S. Code.  This website not only provides source notes, but even provides a link to the source note at the top of each U.S. Code section.  In addition to the source note, the ORLC website provides an “Amendments” note after each U.S. Code section that will typically list how each subsection of the U.S. Code section was changed by each amending public law (organized by year of the amendment).

Using Source Credits to Find Public Laws

After finding the source credit, you will see that each citation listed has at least three pieces of information—a public law number or chapter number, the date the public law was enacted, and a citation to where the public law can be found in the United States Statutes at Large.  The United States Statutes at Large citation lists a number, then the abbreviation “Stat.” and then another number—the first number is the volume number, and the second number is the page on which the pertinent section of the public law begins.

As specified in “Federal Statutes: A Beginner’s Guide,” free online access to the United States Statutes at Large is determined by when the public law was passed.  For public laws passed before 1875, you can visit our A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation site.   The Constitution Society’s United States Statutes at Large website covers public laws passed from 1875 to the present, but requires that users download the entire Statutes at Large volume that contains the law in which they might be interested.  Finally, for a more user-friendly experience in finding public laws passed from 1951 to the present, we suggest using the FDSys website.  On the right-hand side of the screen, click “Browse All,” and then on the next page, click on the link for “United States Statutes at Large.” The FDSys United States Statutes at Large page allows users to navigate directly to the public law in which they are interested by clicking the “Private Laws” entry under each volume and finding the public law of interest in a chronological list.  For more up-to-the-minute printings of public laws (1995 to the present), you can also select “Public and Private Laws” from the FDSys homepage.

Next Steps

Finding the public laws in the United States Statutes at Large might be the end of the research trail for those interested in how a law has changed over time.  However, many researchers are also interested in the legislative history documents (such as congressional committee hearings and reports, congressional debates, etc.) attached to the bills and resolutions that eventually became these public laws.  To find the pertinent bill numbers for public laws from 1904 to the present,[2] simply look to the first page of the public law as it is printed in the United States Statutes at Large.  To the immediate left or right (depending on whether the public law starts on an even or odd page) of the first section of the public law, there will be information about both the bill number and date of enactment.  For more information about how to use this citation information to find legislative history documents, please see our “Federal Legislative History Guide.

We hope this Research Guide is helpful for you as you complete your federal legislative research.  If you have any research questions, please contact us via our Ask a Librarian service.

[1] Note that, if the U.S. Code title is a positive law title, there may also be “Historical and Revision Notes,” which “specify the laws that formed the basis of sections that were included in the title when the title was first enacted into positive law. The first act in the source credits for such a section is the act that enacted the title into positive law” (for more information about notes and positive law codification in the U.S. Code, see  http://uscode.house.gov/codification/legislation.shtml).

It Started in Memphis

Early signals of what would become the ongoing treatment of police brutality against African Americans started in Memphis on the horizon of freedom when newly freed slaves were viciously attacked during the first three days of May 1866 by a police-led mob.

The results of a congressional investigation did little to correct the injustices committed against these victims as the government was indifferent towards pursuing and punishing the perpetrators.  Numerous witnesses testified before the Select Committee on the Memphis Riots, often providing the names of those who had committed murders, rapes, mutilations, and destruction of property including homes, schools, and churches, but no legal action was ever taken to signal a no tolerance policy against such egregious acts towards the African American population.

It is no coincidence that a little more than a hundred years later, Memphis would be the place where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reverend, Nobel laureate, peacemaker, lover of mankind, husband, father, and the voice of love and human dignity was assassinated.

In commemoration of Black History Month, this post pays tribute to the men, women, boys, girls and infants on whom the wrath of racism was unleashed in the early days of May 1866. Here is a list of some of the victims and what they suffered:

Harriet Armour, raped and sodomized by two, one a city official

Rebecca Ann Bloom, raped

Robert Carlton, robbed and killed

Robert Reed Church, father of Mary Church Terrell, robbed and shot at fifteen times by policemen

Rachel Hatcher, killed

Lucy Smith, almost 17 years old, raped and brutally beaten to the point of death after being ordered to prepare a suitable supper for the perpetrators

Lucy Tibbs, raped

Francis Thompson, raped by four, two were policemen

The testimony of Emiline Wilson provides a chilling summary of the depths of the atrocities committed during the three days of terror.

GPO & LOC Gov App: Annotated Constitution

The U.S. Constitution: Analysis and Interpretation app is a mobile version of the “Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation” a comprehensive analytical legal treatise prepared by attorneys of the Congressional Research Service at the direction of the United States Senate and issued as Senate Document No. 112-9. The app is presented by the Library of Congress using data provided by the Government Printing Office.

This app:

Delivers the full text of “Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”

Contains a clause-by-clause discussion of the entire Constitution

Discusses all Supreme Court cases and selected historical documents relevant to interpreting the Constitution

Lists all federal, state, and local laws struck down by the Supreme Court, and all cases where the Court overturned its prior precedent

Contains a table of contents, table of cases, and an index

Note: This is the same Rep Quigley who introduced The “Making Access Records Available to Lead American Government Openness (MAR-A-LAGO) Act,” which would force the president to make the White House visitor logs, as well as the visitor logs at Trump's resorts, public.

Rep. Quigley Press Release           

WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (IL-05), co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Transparency Caucus, introduced the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement or “COVFEFE” Act. This bill codifies vital guidance from the National Archives by amending the Presidential Records Act to include the term “social media” as a documentary material, ensuring additional preservation of presidential communication and statements while promoting government accountability and transparency.

“In order to maintain public trust in government, elected officials must answer for what they do and say; this includes 140-character tweets,” said Rep. Quigley. “President Trump’s frequent, unfiltered use of his personal Twitter account as a means of official communication is unprecedented. If the President is going to take to social media to make sudden public policy proclamations, we must ensure that these statements are documented and preserved for future reference. Tweets are powerful, and the President must be held accountable for every post.”  

In 2014, the National Archives released guidance stating its belief that social media merits historical recording. President Trump’s unprecedented use of Twitter calls particular attention to this concern. When referencing the use of social media, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has said, “The president is president of the United States so they are considered official statements by the president of the United States.”

President Trump’s tweets frequently make national news and are a topic of everyday conversation, including deciphering the meaning behind his tweet using the previously unheard of term, “covfefe.” While his personal account has become the de facto account for government business, it is unclear as to whether or not it would be archived in the same manner as the official @POTUS account under the Presidential Records Act. Another concern relates to President Trump’s frequent deletion of tweets. Including social media in the Presidential Records Act ensures that deleted tweets are documented for archival purposes, and makes deleting tweets a violation of the Presidential Records Act, subject to disciplinary action.

Sighthound Sunday: Government Documents

"Government Documents" is a term used to refer to any sort of material produced by a government (legal, legislative, statistical data, books and reports, research studies, consumer guides, archival material) in any format. They cover a wide variety of topics and can be a great primary source document to use in your research paper.

There is an official program through which federal documents are shared with the public called the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP).  The FDLP distributes publications, printed or received by the Government Publishing Office (GPO), to libraries that elect to serve as depositories.

via @saftergood, fas.org & @everycrsreport

All House committees and most Senate committees are required to prepare reports each Congress detailing their activities.

These committee activity reports provide a historical record of a committee’s legislative and oversight actions. They may serve as an introduction to the work of the individual committees, and, in many cases, they also provide information that is otherwise either not aggregated in one place or not available elsewhere.

The committee activity reports are required by the rules of the House (House Rule XI, clause 1(d)) and Senate (Senate Rule XXVI, clause 8(b)). The reporting requirement dates to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 (2 U.S.C. §190d).

Each report covers the activities for one Congress. In odd-numbered years, House reports are to be filed by January 2, while Senate reports are to be filed by March 31.

This report includes a discussion of the types of information that may be included in the activity reports, variations across reports and time, and the filing process.

A table provides a comparison of the committee activity reports and other congressional publications, including the types of information found in each as well as their timeframe for coverage and publication. For example, the activity reports may be more likely to provide discussion, analysis, or statistics than committee calendars (if published). They also provide a retrospective accounting of the actions taken by a particular committee, while House authorization and oversight plans, for example, provide information on prospective or planned actions.

H.R. 4631 would require the Government Publishing Office (GPO) to establish and maintain a website that would allow the public to obtain electronic copies of all Congressionally mandated reports. Under H.R. 4631, all executive, legislative, and judicial branch agencies would be required to provide GPO with reports required by law each year. The Library of Congress (LOC) would provide an annual report on Congressionally mandated reports.

Using information from GPO, LOC, and other agencies that produce the thousands of Congressionally mandated reports, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would cost about $2 million over the 2018-2022 period. CBO estimates this work would cost about $400,000 a year for four employees (two senior and two junior analysts) to ensure comprehensive compliance with the requirement to list all mandated reports. That spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

H.R. 4631 would affect direct spending by agencies not funded through annual appropriations; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. However, CBO estimates that any net increase in spending by those agencies would be negligible. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues.

CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 4631 would not significantly increase net direct spending or on-budget deficits in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2028.

H.R. 4631 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.