 Hi, this is Mary Wisner from the Gallagher Law Library. I'd like to show you how you can easily retrieve congressional reports and hearings for your source gathering. Now in this lesson, I would like to show you how you can get the low-hanging fruit. That is, reports and hearings that are posted on government websites and are easily found in Hine Online in either the Congressional Documents Collection or the Federal Legislative History Library. There are lots of other sources, other databases, other techniques, but we're focusing on the low-hanging fruit. Odds are good that you'll easily be able to find the following. Hearings and reports after 1995, that's the 104th Congress, they're on government websites. Reports since 1817, that's the 15th Congress, they're in the serial set on Hine Online. And reports are hearings that are connected with important or famous legislation. They're often included in legislative histories on Hine Online. For post-1995 reports, I think the easiest thing to do is to use Google. Let's say we're looking for House Report 104-664. That means it was the 104th Congress and the 664th House Report of that Congress. I can do a Google search for 104-664 site colon dot gov. That tells Google that I only want to find documents that are posted on a government site. And I get results that include both congress dot gov and govinfo dot gov. Those sites are both great sources. Congress dot gov is run by the Library of Congress and covers, as you would guess from the name, Congress. Govinfo dot gov is run by the government publishing office and has a variety of government documents, including many from Congress. On these sites, you generally get a choice of plain text or PDF. That looks like this. Plain text is on the left and it looks like a 1980s printer job, a very simple type setting. This can be good if you want to use the document for copying and pasting or if you want to use it for a visually impaired person to use a screen reader. On the right, we have a PDF, which is nicely typeset. That will generally be better for you for site checking because you get the page numbers. Here's a Google trick. If you know that you want a PDF, you can include file colon dot PDF in your search. So in my sample search here, I'm looking for the report number in a government site in a PDF format. By the way, you can also do that when you're looking for other types of file, like Word documents or PowerPoints or JPEGs or Excel spreadsheets. For hearings, in the last 25 years, after 1995, you can also use Google. Hearings, according to the blue book, are cited by title and they don't have that unique numerical identifier. So you search for words. For instance, if we're looking for examining the FinTech landscape, hearing before the committee on banking, housing and urban affairs, we can search for examining FinTech landscape, hearing 115th site, gov, file, PDF. And we pretty quickly get a PDF examining the FinTech landscape, hearing, blah, blah, blah. This is from GovInfo.gov. It's also on congress.gov. That technique doesn't always work. For instance, when I was looking for Voting Rights Act, the continuing need for Section 5, a hearing that was in 2006, my Google search, Voting Rights Continuing Section 5, hearing 109th, turned up too many briefs, cases and reports, citing the hearing. So there was just too much to wade through and I wanted to find another way. What we can do is we can browse. We can browse in either GovInfo.gov or congress.gov. I'm going to show you GovInfo.gov. So here we are in GovInfo.gov and I can scroll down and see congressional hearings. And I wanted the 109th congress, a house hearing, so I'm just drilling down, committee on the judiciary. There were quite a few hearings during that congress and so I used Control F to get to voting and there's Voting Rights Act, the continuing need for Section 5. And there you go. And we have our hearing. To find older reports, we can use the Serial Set. And that's available in different places, but I'm going to show you Hein on Line. The Serial Set compiles reports, documents and journals from the House and the Senate. Hein on Line's coverage starts in 1817, the 15th congress. If you need to go older than that, it's possible, but let's just start with Hein. Some of the Serial Set volumes are on Hein on Line. Some are on a service called the Hathi Trust. If the document you need is both places, I recommend that you choose Hein on Line because the interface has some advantages. Let's find House of Representatives Report number 74-1255 from 1935 in Hein on Line. Hein on Line is available from our homepage here. If you're using it at home, you'll be prompted for your UW Net ID and the different libraries or collections are listed in alphabetical order. Going down to US Congressional Documents, choose the Serial Set. And then we have a lookup tool where we can say, I want, let's see, what was it? It was a House report, and it was from the 74th Congress, and it was report number 1255, and then search. Preservation of historic American sites, buildings, objects, and antiquities of national significance. You might think, who cares about a 1935 report? But the thing of it is, the Antiquities Act has been in news and has been in play in the Obama administration and the Trump administration. The two H's here indicate the blue one indicates that it's available in Hein on Line. The orange one indicates that it's available through the Hathi Trust. I like using the Hein on Line, and if you just click on the link to the title, that takes you to Hein on Line. Nice thing about Hein on Line is the way you can download, the way you can have a permalink to the particular page, and it's just a familiar interface for us. Now, the next tool I'm going to show you is Compiled Legislative Histories. Compiled just means somebody brought together a bunch of documents related to one act that went through Congress. Typically, it will include bills, hearings, reports. It might include floor debates from the congressional record and presidential signing statement. You should try Hein on Line's US Federal Legislative History Library. If you notice that several of the sources you're supposed to gather all relate to the same law, or if you weren't able to find the report or hearings through the other techniques we've covered, or if you'd just like to see how it all fits together. Let's take a look at the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. It was Public Law 90, meaning the 90th Congress, 351 in 1968. You find the US Federal Legislative History Library. I'm going to go to the title collection, and there's an option to look up legislative histories by the popular name of the act, since you could also look by public law number, and I knew the public law number, but I find the popular name is a little bit easier to remember. So Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets starts with an O, Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, and they have two. One is one volume from the government printing office. It's an index to the legislative history. The other one is four volumes from a large D.C. law firm. Let's go for the longer one. HINE Online inserts a cumulative content so that we can get a quick overview of what's in the whole four volume set. They have the public law, presidential remarks, House report, Senate report, Senate hearing, and it goes on, House hearing, congressional record. Lots of congressional record, presidential remark. So there's just a lot packed into this four volume set. If you were working on an article that cited a couple of reports and a hearing, you could come to this legislative history and get it all at once. You can also search within this title, so if you wanted to find any place where wiretapping was mentioned, there you go. So to recap, if you're looking for House or Senate reports or hearings, you can use Google. That's especially effective if you're looking at 1995 to present. Tip, in Google you can require that the site be.gov and that the file be.pdf. In addition to Google, you can browse govinfo.gov or congress.gov. They both cover 1995 to present. Our demo showed you govinfo.gov, but you could look at congress.gov as well. For older reports, use the serial set in HINE Online. For reports and hearings and a variety of other materials, use HINE Online Legislative Histories. Now remember at the beginning, I told you that I was only going to show you the low hanging fruit. If you want to go further, we have a guide, Federal Legislative History. And UW Libraries Government Publications Department has a guide called All Things Congressional. I recommend that you look at those and you will be able to get any of the fruit of legislative history. This has been Mary Wisner from the Gallagher Law Library. Please see our website for library services, research guides, and more. That URL is lib.law.uw.edu.