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U.S. Government Information & Congressional Publications

About Hearings & Testimonies

A committee holds hearings to determine facts, to sample opinion, and to carry out its oversight functions. A hearing on a bill will usually reprint the bill. Hearings are not held for all legislation; not all hearings are published. The published hearing includes the testimony of witnesses, transcripts of question and answer sessions, and copies of any exhibits and materials introduced.

Hearings are not always about a bill. They may be exploratory or investigative.

The testimony of the hearing (available through ProQuest Congressional 1988 -) is the transcript or prepared text of the witnesses and the transcript of the question and answer session.  Note: testimonies are available much more quickly than the published hearing.

Identifying & Locating Hearings

If you have a title, be sure to search DELCAT. If you wish to search by keywords, your searching may be easier in some of the full text databases, such as ProQuest Congressional Publications.

Locating Hearings in the UD Library (print and microfiche)

This table will be useful when locating hearings which have been identified in the ProQuest Congressional database (Library Databases). First check DELCAT Discovery then use this table.

Date Congress Microforms Collection U.S. Documents Microfiche Annex U.S. Documents
Prior to 1975 Prior to 94th Cong     Arranged by Y 4 SuDoc call numbers
1975-1981 95th Cong to 97th Cong, 1st sess Microfiche no. 2100 (arranged by ProQuest/ CIS accession numbers)   Arranged by Y 4 SuDoc call numbers
1982- 97th Cong, 2nd sess-   Arranged by Y 4 SuDoc call numbers  
         

1833 to 1952

Historical set-  identified as Microfiche Group (number)

23rd to 82nd Cong Microfiche no. 2075 (arranged by Group numbers and ProQuest/ CIS accession numbers)    

Unpublished House Hearings

Unpublished Senate Hearings

  Microfiche various call numbers (arranged by ProQuest/ CIS accession numbers).    

Unpublished Committee Hearings

Many hearings which were not published at the time they were held may became available for publication years later. These are indexed in the ProQuest Congressional Publications database.  The Library has these sets of hearings in microfiche format:

  • House Unpublished Hearings

  • Senate Unpublished Hearings

Unpublished U.S. House of Representatives Committee Hearings.
Location: Morris Library - Microforms (Microfiche no. 1961; 2025; 2027; 2037; 2076; 2081)

1833-1936 Microfiche no. 1961   1954-1958 Microfiche no. 2037
1937-1946 Microfiche no. 2025   1959-1964 Microfiche no. 2076
1947-1954 Microfiche no. 2027   1965-1968 Microfiche no. 2081

Unpublished U.S. Senate Committee Hearings.
Location: Morris Library - Microforms (Microfiche no. 2026, 2029, 2074, 2077, 2093)

1823-1964 Microfiche no. 2029   1973-1976 Microfiche no. 2077
1965-1968 Microfiche no. 2026   1977-1980 Microfiche no. 2093
1969-1972 Microfiche no. 2074