Find an expert

The U.S. Congressional Bibliographies web site is a searchable list of committee meetings held by both houses of Congress. Each meeting topic is briefly described along with the names and titles of the people appearing before the committee.

Barbara Rehkop, Washington University's government documents librarian, says that committee meeting transcripts are under-recognized as research resources. Congress is able to draw the foremost experts on any topic to their meetings. Just by reading the material in U.S. Congressional Bibliographies, a researcher can identify the major players in the field. Transcripts of the meetings, if they can be tracked down, will yield what these experts had to say--presumably in the most clear and concise expression they could manage.

The U.S. Congressional Bibliographies site is also a good way to get a feel for the kind of topics that Congress considers. For example, searching on "hurricane" resulted in 28 hits. The most recent was a House hearing about the efforts taken to protect money during natural and other disasters. A Senate hearing in 1989 discussed modernization and restructuring of the National Weather Service. Either of these might be interesting topics for research and these hearings would be a useful starting point.

I learned about U.S. Congressional Bibliographies from a message on GOVDOC-L by Jack McGeachy announcing updates.     #

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