Collection Spotlight: Legislative Insight – Getting the Whole Story
by John Olson, Government and Geo-Information Librarian
Legislative Insight from ProQuest is a database that can work as a separate search interface to find full-text documents related to the creation of specific public laws. These documents include enacted or related bills, Congressional Record transcripts, committee hearings, reports, etc. along with other types of documents like committee prints, CRS reports and other congressional publications as well as Presidential signing statements.
The great thing about this database is that you can search or browse by topic or by the specific name of the law or the popular name of a law. You can also search by the congressional bill, public law, Statutes at Large, resolution or report number, or you can search by Superintendent of Documents number. The example above shows the timelines of the laws, and their legislative histories focused on clean air related to transportation.
Each specific Legislative History Research Page covers one public law that will give you citation information for every document that’s linked and related to that law. You can also search within the full text of all the documents in that History. The search terms used will then be displayed in an orange box within those full text documents.
What’s the difference between Legislative Insight and ProQuest Congressional? ProQuest Congressional contains documents related to all actives of congress, including the creation of law. Legislative Insight provides a timeline of relevant bills by topic, legislative histories of each bill, and links to all relevant documents within ProQuest Congressional.
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