Federal Legislative History Guide

Use ProQuest Legislative Insight if:

• You are doing a federal legislative history
• You want documents published by the U.S. Congress for bills before they become a U.S. Public Law, such as
  • Versions of the bill and related bills
  • Reports
  • Hearings
  • Committee prints
  • Congressional Record sections
  • Presidential Signing Statements  

Another resource to be aware of is ProQuest Congressional.  ProQuest Congressional is similar to Legislative Insight, but can be used for documents or a legislative history for bills that do NOT become law (as well as for bills that do).  If you want a legislative history of a bill that did not become law, look at this LibGuide to ProQuest Congressional.

Which search should I use?

• Use "Search by Number" if you know a number for a bill or document
• Otherwise, use "Guided Search"

How to search?

• In both Quick Search and Guided Search you can use AND, OR, and NOT in your searches. 
  • Search for documents that contain all of your possible words (for example: cocaine AND sentencing)
  • Search for documents that contain at least one of you possible words (for example: "climate change" OR "global warming")
  • Include a word but exclude others (for example: teaching NOT shortage). 
• If you want to search a phrase, put the phrase in quotes 
• Use a question mark and asterisk to expand word variations in your search
  • A question mark replaces a single letter in a word, so mari?uana would search for both marijuana and marihuana   
  • An asterisk can replace single or multiple letters, so walk* would retrieve walk, walks, walked, walkers, and walking 
• Use NEAR/ to search for words that are near one another
  • For example, "stem cell" NEAR/5 research, retrieves documents that have "stem cell" within five words of "research"

There are many different ways to search on ProQuest:

• Using a basic search bar
• Using an advanced search called "Guided search"
• Using citations. 
• Using the Popular Names Table below the basic search bar.

Once you look up a particular law, the documents associated with the law will be organized by type (e.g. hearings, reports, etc.), and will be available in pdf format.