More fun with the Congressional Record

Yes, gentle readers, it's been quite some time since an update. But don't think I've been hardly workin'! There's been govdocs galore around these parts, and now I'd like to share.

Say you want to look up something in the Congressional Record. Say it's a remark a Senator or Congressperson made. Say it took place in the 1940s, a period of time for which the CR does not exist electronically. What would you do?

If you answered: ask my friendly government information reference librarian, you'd be on your way! But let's say your friendly government information reference librarian was trapped under a pile of Current Industrial Reports, then what would you do?

Well, I'll tell you.

First, it will help to know that Gelman has the CR upstairs on the third floor, in microfilm. This will require you to do your research old school style, but most of you are wearing your vintage Air Jordans and dressing like Molly Ringwald from Pretty in Pink anyway, so you should be down with that. You would probably want to start with the index for that year, so you could find the exact issue and pages of the CR you need.

Next, you would load the reel of film onto the microfilm reader (those machines that look like they might be a computer but don't seem to have a keyboard that are right in the front of the third floor... by the red help me phone). Locate the pages you need and the corresponding reel of film, and load that onto the machine (wait! take off the other real first!). Find your pages, and print 'em off!

Sounds like a piece of cake, right? Right!

Of course, if the CR you need is from 1985 and beyond, you can always check out the Lexis Nexis Congressional database in the ALADIN Research Portal. But then, you wouldn't be able to brag that you did your research totally 80s style.