Understand the Sources

Overview: Committee Prints

U.S. Congressional Committee Prints

Origin

Unlike the House and Senate Reports, Documents, Journals, Bills and Resolutions, Congressional Committee Prints lack a uniform numbering system and consistent publication history. This is in large part due to their function as printed versions of the committees' staff and members' own internal working papers. Historically, Committee Prints evolved from mainly internal documents, printed because that was the contemporary technology of convenience [just as we use Xerox copies or e-mail messages today] for committee use, into established vehicles for the dissemination of committee work and deliberation first to their congressional colleagues and then, in many cases, to the public at large. Printing and publication practices for Committee Prints vary from committee to committee and change over the history of individual committees, since they are the exclusive products of the individual committees. They are the most heterogeneous of all congressional publications.

Not in Serial Set

Since the U.S. Congressional Serial Set by definition is restricted to the Reports, Documents, and Journals of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the publications of individual congressional committees are not included in it.

Definition and Identification

There is no official definition of the term "Committee Print." The word print is used in its original, though now somewhat archaic sounding, sense of "something printed, printed matter," so they are literally something printed by the committees. [They are not "views of the Capitol or the engravings of artistic committees.] The use of the term "print" is similar to its use in the UPA series of the British Foreign Office Confidential Print. Though only a small percentage of the Congressional Committee Prints were officially confidential, their often very limited distribution, sometimes only to committee members, made them, especially in the first half of the 19th century virtually confidential. As a result of their multiple internal uses, Committee Prints historically have inconsistent formats. Many of these publications have the words "Committee Print" on the cover or title page, but even more do not. Some committees assigned internal serial numbers to their prints, most did not.

Date range, 1830-1969

Because the congressional committee system developed slowly throughout the first half of the 19th century, those exclusively committee publications, which we term Committee Prints, are relatively few in the antebellum period. With the growth of the committee system from 1865-1900 and the increasing complexity and responsibilities of the federal government, the volume of committee publications increased. There were further increases in the early 20th century, but the majority of the Committee Prints in the CIS collection date from the post-World War II period, reflecting the great expansion of the federal government during this period.

Types of Committee Prints and Subjects Covered in Them

The subjects of Committee Prints reflect the range of concerns and responsibilities of the committees themselves. Obviously the different functions of the various committees cause differences in the kind of prints they published. For example, a strictly research-orientated committee like the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation produced very different prints from investigative committees like the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The basic types of Committee Prints with sample titles are summarized below:

• Monographic studies: special studies on a particular subject or a broad topic directly related to committee responsibilities. Sample titles: Alaska's Vanishing Frontier; Hydrogen Bomb and International Control
• Investigative reports: reports on special investigations held in Washington, DC or outside the Capitol. Sample titles: Operations of Billie Sol Estes; East of the Elbe: Report by Sen. Joseph A. Clark on a Study Mission to Warsaw, Moscow, Belgrade, and Prague
• Section-by-Section Bill Analyses and Comparative Prints of Bills: analysis of legislation with detailed U.S. Code references and prints comparing the provisions of different legislative proposals. Sample titles: Section-by-Section Analysis of the Provisions of the Housing Act of 1959, S. 57, as agreed to in conference; National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act for fiscal year 1969, H.R. 15856, Comparison of Senate and House Versions
• Confidential staff memoranda and reports: Sample titles: Confidential Data Furnished by the U.S. Shipping Board regarding the Shipbuilding Situation in Great Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark [in 1919]; German Lumber Economy, 1947
• Departmental reports on legislation or policy: Written comments by Federal agencies on proposed or existing legislation. Sample titles: Report to Congress on Lend-Lease Operations; Operations under the Federal Reports Act
• Statistical compilations: Recurring statistical publications. Sample titles: Economic Indicators; Quarterly Report of the Activities Authorized by P.L. 763
• Directories, bibliographies, and other reference materials: Sample titles:
• Hearings: either full texts or excerpts. Sample titles: Hearings on Rocket Launcher Inquiry, Investigation at Fort Dix, N.J.; Extension of Lend-Lease Act: Excerpts from Testimony of Col. Spencer B. Eddy
• Draft reports and bills: preliminary drafts of reports which may or may not have been issued in final form, usually on appropriations. Sample title: Department of Defense Appropriation Bill, 1967. Report to Accompany H.R.----
• Public information or propaganda publications: Sample titles: Lest We Forget: A Pictorial Summary of Communism in Action; Who Are They? Josef Broz Tito and Wladyslaw Gomulka

Size of the Collection: approximately 15,200 titles on 17,743 microfiche. The largest, most complete single collection is the CIS Committee Prints Collection.

SuDoc Classification

In the Superintendent of Documents classification scheme, the "Y" class covers miscellaneous congressional publications and the "Y4" subclass is reserved for Committee Prints. The Checklist of Public Documents notes that "many of the publications of the committees of the Senate and House of Representatives [i.e., the Committee Prints] have been issued in separate signatures and in incomplete editions."

Finding Aids Access -- Print and Congressional

• Subjects and Names Index. Includes controlled subject vocabulary, act names, federal agency and other corporate names, and personal names
• Title Index
• Bill Number Index
• SuDoc Number Index
• Index by Congress and Committees
• Reference Bibliography with entries displaying full bibliographic data and assigned index terms, which serve as a kind of verbless abstract, for each print

Sources of Filmed CIS Committee Prints Collection

• Senate Library's bound collection of Committee Prints [filmed by Greenwood Press]
• Library of Congress bound collection of Committee Prints [filmed by Greenwood]
• Y4 Collection of the Superintendent of Documents Library at the National Archives
• Congressional committee legislative archives at the National Archives
• Congressional committee offices in the Capitol
• Supreme Court Library and numerous other Washington, DC libraries and libraries outside Washington

Overlap with other CIS Retrospective Collections

• There is a small degree of overlap between Committee Prints and Congressional Committee Hearings. Although 11% of the Committee Prints titles were indexed to the term "Congressional committee hearings and summaries," about a fourth or more of those are titles are simply brief excerpts from the full hearings or summaries of them.
• There is also a very small degree of overlap between the bill drafts and comparative prints of bills in Committee Prints Collection and the CIS Bills and Resolutions Collection.
• There is an even smaller degree of overlap between report drafts and final legislative reports in the Serial Set.

Post -1969 Committee Print Coverage

CIS/Index