Politics Library Blog

We’ve just expanded our subscription to GalleryWatch.com to include two additional modules. Now that GalleryWatch has partnered with Roll Call, Inc., they have released a new service called CongressNow that highlights recent news about U.S. legislation. In addition, the new HotDocs service provides convenient one-click access to the key documents associated with developing legislative issues, including CBO cost estimates, GAO reports, position papers, and the text of bills. Access to the full text of Congressional Research Service reports (back to 1993) continues under our GalleryWatch subscription.

Taken together with Lexis-Nexis Congressional, the CQ Electronic Library, and National Journal Group’s Policy Central, the expanded GalleryWatch service nicely complements coverage of emerging U.S. policy.

The Library has added several modules to Lexis-Nexis Congressional in the last few months! We now have access to the Digital U.S. Congressional Serial Set, full text of historical and current Congressional hearings, and the Congressional Research Digital Collection.

With the new Digital Serial Set product we can now access the full text of Congressional reports and documents going all the way back to 1789-1969. For now, we can access the full text of hearings for 1971-1996 and 2004-present (coverage will eventually go back to 1824). In addition, full text of committee prints back to 1830 and Congressional Research Service reports back to 1916 are now available as part of the Congressional Research module.

Use the Advanced Search feature to limit your searches to specific types of Congressional publications. Feel free to contact John if you need more help.

The library has signed on to the new online edition of the CQ Almanac.

Since 1945, CQ Almanac has been the definitive reference for studying the U.S. Congress. Arranged thematically, each annual volume of the CQ Almanac organizes, distills, and cross-indexes the full year in Congress and in national politics.

The Online Edition allows users to:

• navigate through more than 60 years of Congressional coverage
• access tables, graphs, and charts
• search by keywords
• browse by subject, decade, or a volume’s table of contents

The Policy Tracker feature allows you to trace major policy issues across several volumes of the CQ Almanac to track how the issue has developed over time.

The handy CiteNow! feature allows you to automatically generate appropriate citations in MLA, APA and Bluebook styles. You can also export your citations to RefWorks and EndNote!

You can access the CQ Almanac online via the CQ Electronic Library.