If you do not have access to subscription websites, such as ProQuest (PQ) Legislative Insight, Westlaw, Lexis or HeinOnline, there are several free government websites, which are useful for legislative history research.
Bills, Committee Reports, Hearings and the Congressional Record are available at the Congress.gov. Congress.gov is a great resource for researching bills, in particular, because it provides access to all different versions of a bill (introduced, reported, referred, engrossed, enrolled etc.) all of which constitute part of the legislative history. It also provides links to related bills and historical bills. Note the dates of coverage for bills and other materials available via this platform at its Coverage Dates page.
With the expansion of government information online, GPO has responded by rolling out GovInfo which has replaced FDSys (which, in turn, replaced GPO Access), as a gateway to government information. Note the number of important legislative history materials available via GovInfo including Bills, Hearings, House and Senate Committee Reports, Congressional Record (both daily and permanent editions) and even Congressional Documents and Prints.
The Govinfo advanced search feature enables one to select and search a single collection or multiple collection of materials. In this instance, Congressional Reports have been selected.
In addition, one can search within these materials by up to five criteria. Here, the search is by associated bill number, Congress and full text for the phrase “identity theft”. Click on the help link for help constructing your search. It will tell you what search operators to use. In this case, for example, the Help screen indicates that quotation marks must be used to retrieve documents that contain an exact phrase. Therefore, the phrase “identity theft” is in quotes.
The search results are displayed below. Always analyze your search results. Did the search work as you thought it would? Note that helpful information about the results appears in the left hand column, including date, Committee and Congress member. This information could be quite useful for analyzing a large number of results.
This search retrieved only three House reports. One can click on the links to these reports in order to see the full text. It is also worth clicking on the More Information link. One can then see an information screen like the one on the right above. This screen displays important data about this Report including available formats. Note, for example, that this particular report is available in text and pdf. Note also that the metadata provided may be useful for purposes of organizing and understanding the results. One can see, for example, the reference to associated legislation, H.R. 2622, which further validates one's search results. The name of the Committee and its recommendation with respect to H.R. 2622 are also displayed.
GovInfo also provides a link to the History of Bills, which resembles the History of Bills section of the Congressional Record Index. The History of Bills provides a useful list of all legislative actions on bills that are reported in the Congressional Record. When you know the Congress and bill number, it is easy to find the history of the bill by drilling down through the menus provided in order to find, for example, the history of H. R. 2622 of the 108th Congress.
By clicking on text, one can retrieve an entry, such as that shown below. It includes the bill number, title, summary, names of sponsors and cosponsors, and a chronological list of actions on the bill. Each action references a Congressional Record page number, which corresponds to the date that action was was taken.
Thus, this History of Bills entry serves as a useful bill status summary, which describes the entire passage of a bill through Congress in chronological order. One could also look up the referenced pages in the Congressional Record in order to find debate about the bill. Or one could search the Congressional Record using the bill number as a search term, with the appropriate date or Congress restriction, as explained under the Finding Congressional Debate tab. In any case, it is always a good idea to double check one’s search results with a bill status chart like this one. This bill status overview might provide helpful information as to what one did or did not retrieve with a database search.