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Trending: Congressional Research Service Reports Now Available Online

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I’m pleased to announce that, for the first time, the Library of Congress is providing Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports to the public. The reports are available online at crsreports.congress.gov. Created by experts in CRS, the reports present a legislative perspective on topics such as agriculture policy, counterterrorism operations, banking regulation, veteran’s issues and much more.

Founded over a century ago, CRS provides authoritative and confidential research and analysis for Congress’ deliberative use.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 directs the Library to also make CRS reports publicly available online. We worked closely with Congress to make sure that we had a mutual understanding of the law’s requirements and Congress’ expectations in our approach to this project.

The result is a new public website for CRS reports based on the same search functionality that Congress uses – designed to be as user friendly as possible – that allows reports to be found by common keywords. We believe the site will be intuitive for the public to use and will also be easily updated with enhancements made to the congressional site in the future.

Moving forward, all new or updated reports will be added to the website as they are made available to Congress. The Library is also working to make available the back catalog of previously published reports as expeditiously as possible. More details about this process can be found on the site’s Frequently Asked Questions page.

CRS reports supplement the official congressional information the Library provides on its congress.gov website.

In keeping with our desire to engage users with the Library and its materials, we are happy to see these reports put to the widest use possible. I hope that you find them a useful addition to the many resources available to you from the Library of Congress.

Comments (16)

  1. The CRS predecessor began in 1914. I’ve seen reports from the 1970’s. Is it possible that any of the older reports have been deaccessioned or are they all stored safely within LOC in physical (if not digital) formats?

    Congratulations on a job well done. The launch of an official public source for these reports is a great accomplishment.

  2. This is one of the things I was really hoping Dr. Hayden would be able to accomplish with her time at the LoC and I am so happy she has been able to get this done. Congrats to the whole team who worked on this.

  3. This is SO wonderful! Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make it happen!!!!

  4. Ok

  5. Thank you for this incredible resource!

  6. Superb work! Thank you for making CRS the public resource it should be—now, especially 😉

  7. What a wonderful service! Thank you to the Library for implementing it and to Congress for initiating it.

  8. Its a great resource

  9. Thanks to Library of Congress for publicizing this reports document, what a great job! I hope many will reach behind the truth.

  10. This is wise of Congress and the LOC. I vividly recall, 40+ years ago working in a congressional office in which the legislative assistant commissioned a long paper from the (then) LRS, which he then submitted as his masters thesis at either GW or AU, then spun into fancier government jobs. I was appalled but too young to speak up. Perhaps abuses like that will now end.

  11. Excellent resource for the Library to host. VSO docents such as myself will be sure to let our visitors know about this. I have been telling my tours to look for this since this was authorized in the Tax Act. Good work LC!

  12. It would be great if this site had an RSS feed!

  13. I will fact justice’s.
    Thank You.

  14. So glad these reports are available. As a lawyer, I’ve used them as first-stop (and sometimes last-stop) treatises on new areas of federal law. Your highest-profile publication, the annotated U.S. Constitution, is just indispensable…it’s amazing, and I won’t make any authoritative claim about constitutional law without referring to it.

    • Thank you, Nicholas! The Constitution Annotated is a marvel.
      Best,
      Neely

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