Go to the Library's website (lib.tcu.edu), click on the Databases tab and choose the letter P
The databases under P are listed in alphabetical order. Scroll down to ProQuest and choose from the list of Congressional databases.
You will be taken to the ProQuest Congressional Homepage where you are able to:
Advanced search is the best way to search for Congressional documents in ProQuest.
On the homepage click on the Legislative & Executive Publications tab and select Advanced Search OR just click on Advanced under the basic search bar.
In Advance Search you may limit the types of documents in your search. The dates of what are available for the type of document are also listed.
You are also able to limit your search by Date or Congress.
EXAMPLE: Searching for Documents on "UFOs". Limited the search to Hearings only by clicking on "Select all" to clear out the check marks and checked the Hearings box only. Then the dates were limited to Prior to 1970.
Two hearings were found from prior to 1970 regarding UFOs. Notice that you have the options on this page to see the Citation/Abstract, access the Full text and get the Permalink to the document.
If you happen to know the number of a Bill or a Law or if you have the SuDoc number for a document you have the ability to specifically search for those.
On the homepage click on the Legislative & Executive Publications tab and select Search by Number.
Under Search by Number you have three options to choose from:
There are four options under the Legislation tab in Search by Numbers:
CONGRESSIONAL BILLS
In this section you are able to narrow your search by:
PUBLIC LAWS
In this section you are able to search by Congress and Law Number.
STATUTES AT LARGE
In this section you are able to search by Volume/Page or Chapter
Volume/Page
Chapter
With this option you may choose by Congress or Date
(Congress example)
(Date example)
PUBLIC RESOLUTION
In this section you are able to search specific resolution numbers by Congress or Date.
(By Congress)
(By Date)
There are four options under the Publication Search tab in Search by Numbers:
PUBLICATION NUMBER
With this option you are able to choose:
SUDOC NUMBER
The SuDoc Number (Superintendent of Documents) is a classification number assigned which groups together publications by the same government author. Within an agency or department, publications are grouped by subordinate organization.
Citations vary, depending on the agency.
Examples: Y4.R31/3:113-13 is a hearing from the House Committee on Natural Resources, C3.2:W29/2/no.2 is a document from the Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.
Our library has a Virtual Shelf Browser which allows you to peruse the historic and current U.S. government publications available in our library as well as online. It also helps make sense of the complicated classification system.
When searching by SuDoc in ProQuest DO NOT use spaces (example: Y4.Ag8/1:102-9)
ACCESSION NUMBER
An accession number is a unique identifier to a specific document in ProQuest Congressional. The number is assigned by ProQuest.
SERIAL SET VOLUME
Use this search to retrieve all publications and maps from within a particular volume.
House and Senate Reports and Documents were bound into volumes in the Serial Set. Each volume was sequentially numbered.
Under the Congress in Context tab ProQuest created historical profiles to discover more about the setting, personnel and events which may have influenced the legislation created during a particular Congressional period.
EXAMPLE: President Donald Trump
From the homepage, ProQuest gives you the option to access other available ProQuest databases from the Congressional database. As of 4/12/2021, the following databases are available:
