Introduction
Once you've selected your issue, and have done some background research, a good next step is to conduct a legislative history to get a sense of the policies, laws, and cases related to your topic. The next couple modules will walk you through resources available at UCF to help with this proccess. To get started, we'll begin with our collection of Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports.
These reports are generated by a committee at the Library of Congress and are designed to inform Congress on legislative issues. They can take the form of policy analysis, economic studies, statistical reviews, legal analyses, historical studies, and chronologies.
They're also beneficial in that they're short summaries of complex issues, so they can be read quickly and used generate ideas for further research.
The full collection can be accessed through our ProQuest Congressional database, which also includes other invaluable documents such as:
- Legislative Histories
- Bills & Laws
- Hearings
- Vote Reports
CRS Reports -- Congressional Research Service (1916+)
- ProQuest Congressional (1789+)
This link opens in a new window
access to vast and varied information published by and about Congress, including full text of almost all Committee Reports from 1990 forward and Congressional testimony from 1988 forward.
- CRS Reports User GuideFor more information about CRS Reports, see this handy guide.
ProQuest Congressional
From this screenshot, we can see that, in addition to CRS reports, ProQuest Congressional also includes Legislative histories, bills, laws, hearings, voting results, and much more. You can search the entire collection or select which documents to include in your results by checking the options in the sidebar. Together these resources will provide a wealth of invaluable information on a wide array of social issues.
Once you've explored these resources, a good next step will be to search for court cases related to your issue. With that in mind, let;s move on to Nexis Uni.