Congressional Research Reports
from the Fall, 2007, FDLC
This presentation, conducted by Starr Hoffman, the Digital Collections Librarian at UNT, and Bill Sleeman from the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland School of Law, highlighted the importance of these reports as research tools, and gave information on how to find them online, which is not an easy task.
At UNT, they are undertaking a comprehensive approach to making the reports available. They currently have over 10,000 reports in their database, covering all subjects. You can browse or search the full-text to find the reports you need. Thurgood Marshall, on the other hand, focusses their collection on reports of homeland security interest, and in the area of health law and policy.
Both Bill and Starr gave some background information on the status of these reports and how we can help pressure Congress to make them more easily available. Although some members of Congress want to make them available to the public, and even some legislation has been introduced recently to mandate this, there is still resistance on the part of other members; the current director of the CRS also wants to enforce the current distribution limits more strongly, according to Bill. [KA]
