Best Practices in Legislative Research

This Roundtable was held to gather together best practices among the group's legislative researchers to be used for conducting legislative research and training others. Questions were presented to the group and each person was given the opportunity to respond and share experiences and ideas.

The goal of the Roundtable was to come up with a set of Best Practices that could assist both beginner and veteran legislative researchers in both research and training.

NOTE: The Roundtable focused on federal legislative history. State legislative history resources were neither discussed nor taken into consideration.

Q: What is the first resource you turn to when asked to provide legislative research? Why? Two sub-questions: (a) For current legislation, U.S. Code sections or Act sections post-1995 and (b) for older legislation.

A: First, it is important to note that different starting points in research will lend themselves to using different databases. For instance, most of the group agreed that if you were given a bill number, THOMAS would be the best place to start for current legislation. If you were given a Code section, the Notes at the end of that section in the U.S. Code or the U.S. Code Annotated would be the place to start.

For current legislation, or any legislative materials post-1995, here are a list of resources named by the group:

• THOMAS provides access to most legislative materials related to bill and public law numbers.
• FDsys provides for advanced searching through legislative materials, including hearings
• CQ.com provides advanced searching over several types of information, including hearing transcripts, CRS reports and other secondary materials, not just bills and reports.
• Bloomberg Government can be compared to CQ
• U.S.C.A. Notes found at the end of each Code section; these provide access to Public Law numbers that can lead you to other legislative materials.

For older legislation, most of the group cited the following resources that would be best used:

• ProQuest Congressional allows for access to the Serial Set and already compiled legislative histories
• HeinOnline contains a nice database of federal legislative histories
• Westlaw's GAO legislative histories

The group also mentioned that time was often the most important factor in their choice of database or starting point. If a patron's request was time sensitive, this highly affected not only where the group would look, but also what information they would give first. Everyone agreed that Congressional reports were the most important piece of legislative history to give to a requester with a time sensitive request.

For current legislation, most were likely to start with THOMAS, FDsys or even U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News (U.S.C.C.A.N.) because these sources would provide immediate access to Congressional reports on the bill or public law. Caveats about the completeness of a legislative history using only these sources would have to be given to the patron.

For older legislation, ProQuest Congressional or Westlaw's GAO Legislative Histories were the sources most likely to be used. U.S.C.C.A.N. was also the likeliest choice for locating the Congressional reports related to older public laws. Other resources mentioned include the IRS Cumulative Bulletin, for Congressional tax reports. Topical newsletters such as the Bloomberg BNA Federal Contracts Report, also provide selected excerpts of legislative materials from time to time.

Finally, the group agreed that law review articles and CRS reports were also wonderful resources to use when time was a factor in research. Sometimes a description of the legislative history could suffice in the place of primary documents.

Q: What training materials do you use that are already in existence and should be included in a Best Practices guide?

A: Most of the group used their own proprietary guides on intranet servers and their own legislative compilations. However, there were some free, online sources mentioned that the group had also used.

• ProQuest Libguides. These guides are tailored towards ProQuest databases. The Congressional Basic guide provides search training in ProQuest Congressional.
• Academic Institutions often provide research guides. The group mentioned Georgetown as having one of the most complete guides on the internet.
• LLSDC Sourcebook.
• Zimmerman's Research Guide was also mentioned. They have a guide on Federal Legislative History that does not just focus on what Lexis has to offer, but provides a broader range of resources.
• Legislative History Research: A Basic Guide, by Julia Taylor (PDF - June 15, 2011).

Q: What access points for beginning legislative research are you most often given by requesters? For each access point, where do you begin research?

A: Most of the group agreed that irrespective of what the requester brings to the reference interview, legislative research is best conducted after locating the correct Public Law number. One group member's best practice was to even add Public Law numbers to her library's catalog. In this way, patrons could search for the Act name, find the Public Law and also find all materials in the library that were related.

To find the Public Law number, the group mentioned the following sources (coupled with the usual piece of information received during the reference interview:

The group acknowledges that not all pieces of legislative information are reflected in the above table. These three items were agreed upon as the most usual pieces of information brought by a requester when asking for a legislative history or more legislative resources.

Q: What are the usual methods for training? Which work the best in your environment?

A: Most in the group agreed that training tended to happen on a one-on-one basis, though group trainings were also scheduled and held. Most agreed that power point presentations that followed the legislative process using examples was the most usual way in which group training took place.

Some members produced Webinars and found that this was the most efficient way to reach people over geographic distances and different offices.

When one-on-one training took place, members agreed that using an example and following that example through the entire legislative process was the best way to train.