Free Trial of Congressional Research Service

Congressional Research Service GalleryWatch is being offered to Sweet Briar College Library for a free trial period. CRS Reports on GalleryWatch include all documents produced by CRS since January 1999. This database is updated weekly making it not only the most comprehensive source for CRS documents, but also the timeliest. The report abstracts from prior years are searchable as well.

CRS is the non-partisan public policy research arm of the United States Congress, which provides Congressional members and committees with in-depth analysis of legislative issues. Considered among the most authoritative sources of information on topics of national and international interest, the agency does not distribute its reports to the public, does not make them available to the public on its website and does not provide public notice of the availability or existence of these reports

URL: http://crs.gallerywatch.com
Userid: crstrial
password: congress1

This trial combines all legislative search features for bills, committees, Members, and statutes. Users may access, daily reports, daily floor schedules, current and upcoming committee schedules, committee actions reports, and much more. The are a number of databases where users may save searches including, Bill Text, Congressional Record Text, Committee and Conference Reports, Prepared Testimony, and Floor Amendments just to name a few. This service also includes:

· Hot Docs: Provides advance copies of "must have" documents, such as rough drafts of bills, conference reports, committee reports, mark up drafts, Congressional staff bill summaries and analysis, “Dear Colleague Letters”, as well as letters between Congress the Administration. It also contains many other documents such as Think Tank Reports, General Accounting Office Reports, Congressional Budget Office Reports and Administrative Announcements to name a few.

· USBudget Appropriations Tracking and News: Monitors the Federal budget, appropriations, and authorization developments with line-item data for thousands of federal discretionary spending programs. USBudget also provides a daily new service and bulletins on current budget, appropriations and authorizations activity. Included with the service are "Tax Trot," a daily collection of tax bills introduced in Congress; "Federal Register Watch," a daily advance notice of grant opportunities that will eventually be published in the Federal Register; and original daily articles and analyses concerning budget and appropriations developments based on interviews with official sources including Members of Congress and staff.

· GW News and Congressional Press Releases: Includes GW Articles, Congressional Member and Committee Press Releases, Federal Agency Press Releases, Hill Events, Committee News, Searching of Article Text, and Daily E-mails of Articles from committees, Members, and Congressional agencies.

· Amendments: Only on GalleryWatch will you find the text of committee amendments, technical amendments, and amendments that are printed but not offered. No other service on the market posts these amendments.

· Committee Coverage: GalleryWatch's coverage of committee hearings is unparalleled. Witness statements are available on our site the same day as the hearing - for every hearing - often within a few minutes of the start time of the hearing. This service also provides the timeliest scheduling information available with instant alerts on Hearing or Markup cancellations or changes in the time or location of the meetings.

· Member Information: Provides profiles on House and Senate Members as well a listing of their staff. The profiles also contain a list bills the Member introduced, bill they cosponsored, their Press Releases, amendments they offered, committee assignments and much more.

· Bill Text Comparison: GalleryWatch allows users to quickly compare the text of any two bills (ie: House & Senate versions, bills from different Congressional sessions) in an easy-to-use format. This is crucial for all GW users who may need to find that a dollar amount or important language has changed deep within a bill.

· Bill & Member Notes: This function allows users to store their own information on the Bill and Member Information Pages. The notes field can store position papers, meeting notes, correspondence, white papers, PAC contributions or anything else relevant to the bill. These notes can also be shared between GalleryWatch user accounts within an organization, giving users an information management tool already built into their legislative tracking service. The notes can also be searched making the database a contact management and a research tool of your organizations institutional knowledge.

· Bill Text Comments: Like the Bill & Member Notes, this function allows clients to store comments within the text of bills to share with other staff members to streamline your organization’s policy development.