How to Find Congressional Hearings on GPO Access
Since all congressional hearings are NOT centrally available on GPO servers at this time, below are outlined five ways for users to find congressional hearings on or through GPO Access.
Existing Tools
The following examples use the existing tools available on GPO Access and external sites GPO links to for congressional hearings. "Cervical cancer" is the sample search used to find the hearing on "Women's Health: Raising Awareness of Cervical Cancer."
- GPO Access - Database of Congressional
Hearings
Starting at the Government Publications page of the Adams Library web site, choose GPO Access from the Federal Government menu. At the GPO Access homepage, click on "Legislative." Scroll down the page and click on "congressional hearings, 105th Congess Forward." Enter the terms "cervical cancer" in the search box. The desired result "Women's Health: Raising Awareness of Cervical Cancer" comes back as the first result, available as a Text or PDF file.
- GPO Access - Committee Browse Page
Starting at the Government Publications page of the Adams Library web site, choose GPO Access from the Federal Government menu. At the GPO Access homepage, click on "Legislative." Scroll down the page to "Miscellaneous House Publications and Committees." Click on this. Scroll down the "U.S. House of Representatives" page until "Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives" appears. Click on "Commerce." You will notice on that page a link to "Committee Hearings." These are hearings that are physically located on GPO servers. Click on this link. The next page will contain a link to "Committee Hearings, 106th Congress." Click on this page. "Women's Health: Raising Awareness of Cervical Cancer" comes back as the fourth result, available as a Text or PDF file.
- GPO Access - Site Search
Starting at the Government Publications page of the Adams Library web site, choose GPO Access from the Federal Government menu. At the GPO Access homepage, click on "Site Search" and enter "cervical cancer." The results list (on the test day) shows the 11th result as "House Committee on Commerce, Committee Hearings (106th Congress). Click on that link, scroll down the page, and find "Women's Health: Raising Awareness of Cervical Cancer" as the fourth option, available as a Text or PDF file. It should be noted that Site Search was able to find this hearing because the title of the hearing appeared on a browseable HTML page. Site Search does not search for information within individual hearing databases on GPO Access.
- Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
Starting at the Government Publications page of the Adams Library web site, choose GPO Access from the Federal Government menu. At the GPO Access homepage, click on "Finding Aids." Next click on Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, and enter the sample search terms in the keyword search box. "Women's Health: Raising Awareness of Cervical Cancer" appears as the seventh result. There are two PURLs available; one for the Text and the other for the PDF file.
- Individual Committee Web Pages
In order to find a congressional hearing through GPO Access on individual committee web pages, a user must know the committee name. For example, to find a hearing on terrorism from the House Committee on Armed Services, starting at the Government Publications page of the Adams Library web site, choose GPO Access from the Federal Government menu. At the GPO Access homepage click on "Legislative." Scroll down the page until the link to "Miscellaneous House Publications and Committees" appears. Click on this. Scroll down the "U.S. House of Representatives" page until "Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives" appears. Click on "Armed Services." There are no congressional hearings listed that are available directly from GPO servers on this page. However, by clicking on "Web Site" you leave GPO Access and go directly to the House Armed Services Committee Web Site. Click on "Schedules and Transcripts" to link to their page of hearings. A hearing on "Terrorist Threats to the United States" is listed. On the test day, however, only a press release about the hearing is posted, not the hearing itself.
GPO cannot guarantee the authenticity of information on non-GPO sites, because we do not have control over the content or organization of that information.