US Congressional Serial Set

The United States Congressional Serial Set began in 1817 as the official collection of reports and documents of the United States Congress. The collection was published in a "serial" fashion, hence its name.

The Serial Set does not normally include the text of congressional debates, bills, resolutions, hearings, committee prints, and publications from congressional support agencies such as the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office. Proceedings of the Congress are published in the Congressional Record, while committee hearings and prints in most cases are published separately through the Government Printing Office (GPO). However, by special order some 300 selected committee hearings were included, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries." Coverage for the period 1789 to 1817 is via the separate compilation American State Papers, which consists of 38 volumes. The two series overlap, as American State Papers covers through 1838.

It is common for a volume of the Serial Set to be composed of a combination of documents and reports. Some of these reports may be one to two pages in length, while others can be hundreds of pages long. Although congressional in name, there are thousands of executive branch publications (e.g., the Annual Report of the Secretary of War and Official Records of the American Civil War) included within its pages. It is this rich combination of legislative and executive publications that account for its tremendous value as a primary source for American history.

Although its more than 14,000 bound volumes are an invaluable historical resource, it has often been neglected by researchers due to weak indexing and limited distribution. Volumes of the Serial Set have been sent to federal depository libraries over the years by the GPO, but many such depositories hold only a partial collection of the set for a variety of reasons (e.g., age of the depository). Also House Report 104-657 directed beginning with volumes covering the 105th Congress (commencing with v.14388) distribution has been limited to regional depositories plus certain others designated by Congress. An exception are Serial Set volumes judged to be key Congressional publications by GPO and that thus receive distribution to all depository libraries.

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