How do I locate copies of Congressional Research Service Reports?
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress. CRS provides comprehensive public policy research exclusively for members of Congress, their committees, and staff. CRS produces a variety of document types, including Issue Briefs (IB), Research Memos (RM), and Reports, which appear in both Short (RS) and Long (RL) formats. For more detailed information on CRS and its publications, see Stephen Young's article, "CRS Reports," published at LLRX.com.
CRS does not distribute its products to the public, although members of Congress have traditionally made the Reports available to their constituents upon request. The following are other sources for locating individual copies of CRS documents:
Libraries
Libraries sometimes collect and catalog individual CRS publications. To search for documents held at a Loyola library, try searching Pegasus. For holdings outside the Loyola system, search WorldCat (available only from the LUC network).
Some libraries subscribe to a service titled "Major Studies and Issue Briefs of the Congressional Research Service." LexisNexis, the publisher, offers a quarterly index with microfiche, as well as an annual microfilm subscription. The Law Library has the microfiche from 1991-1992, located at KF49.C653 in the Microform Room on the 4th Floor. Check WorldCat for other libraries that subscribe to this service.
Vendor Collections
Penny Hill Press - This publisher supplies CRS documents for a fee. Penny Hill claims to have all CRS publications issued since 1995, as well as a majority of documents from 1993 and 1994.
WESTLAW
Westlaw offers access for subscribers to a select number of CRS products. The database, CONGRESR, contains synopses of CRS Reports from January 1992-March 1997. The FTX-CRS database contains full-text Reports and Issue Briefs for tax-related issues, beginning in 1989.
World Wide Web
The website, zfacts.com, offers a Google search template for retrieving Reports available on the WWW. Listed below are also several individual websites that contain collections of CRS publications:
Federation of American Scientists
This site offers various CRS documents concerning the military, national security, intelligence, terrorism, space, and nuclear/chemical weaponry. Use the internal search engine to retrieve CRS materials.
The Center is affiliated with Vanderbilt University and offers a small collection of CRS Reports related to First Amendment issues.
Provides access to a collection of CRS Reports (1993-present) related to intellectual property, cyberlaw, and e-commerce.
Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C.
Provides a collection of Reports concerning Congressional procedures, as well as links to sites where other CRS documents are located.
The Memory Hole is a site dedicated to preserving material that is difficult to find, or is in danger of being lost. There are over 300 CRS Reports posted on a variety of topics, as well as links to other sites where CRS materials are available.
National Library for the Environment (NLE)
The NLE site contains over 1300 CRS Reports on the environment and related topics.
Senator Lugar's site provides access to recent CRS products pertaining to a range of issues, including foreign policy, Senate procedures, and military/defense.
Offers access to over 400 Reports on a variety of topics in PDF format.
The House Rules Committee provides about 200 CRS Reports related to Congressional procedure.
The State Department's Foreign Press Center posts select CRS Reports pertaining to international assistance, foreign nations, terrorism, and military affairs. Coverage begins in 1999.
Prepared by Julienne E. Grant, 8/05.
