Finding CIS Hearings

There will be a class with an assignment due on Feb. 8th that needs to find a hearing between 1860 and 1920. Guess what, most are in microfiche. Therefore, here is a refresher on how to find the CIS fiche in the drawers (they are on the wall to the right of the first entrance to the back office).

Unpublished hearings:
The structure of the numbers is (66) which stands for the session of congress. That is followed by and H or an S meaning House or Senate with the committee abbriviation, then a letter followed by a number. For example: (66) HIm T.1. So you find these by session, then house or senate and committte, and then the document number. These fiche are in the drawers labeled unpublished hearings, although the early House hearings are in the drawer labeled "Senate Executive Documents and Reports." These hearings are NOT in Chinook, you can only find them using LexisNexis Congressional.

Published Hearings:
The ones that this class are interested in are going to be in Group 1(A) and Group 1(b), but these instructions work for all the groups. Group 1(A) is the Senate Library Holdings, and this is where the House and Senate hearings are. Group 1(B) is the Senate Hearings, published as documents and reports from 1833-1931. Group 1 is in the catalog.
So lets find this document: CIS Hrgs MF Gp 1--H231-Pt.1-2

• The CIS Hrgs MF tells us it is in this collection.
• Gp1, actually means group 1(A). (Group 1(B) also appears as Gp 1) So how do you tell whether it is group 1(A) or (B)? See the next bullet (or for an example of 1(B) this next search).
• H231, tells us it is a House hearing and also that it is in 1(A), if it is 1(B) it will have a congress number and a document number. So go into the 1(A) section and find the microfiche with the House on the card and then the 231 stands for volume 231.
• The Pt.1 tells us this is part 1.
• The 2 actually tells where in Volume 231 this is. You will have to pull out the fiche and find the one with a 2 on it and then keep gathering fiche until you reach the one with a 3 on it.

So let's find this document: CIS Hrgs MF Gp 1--(23-1) S.Doc. v.5 n.422

• The CIS Hrgs MF tells us it is in this collection.
• GP1, in this case, actually means 1(b) because of the numbers that follow the --.
• The (23-1) means the 23rd Congress, 1st session, which is how this section is organized.
• The S.Doc. tells us that this is in the Senate documents collection.
• The volume 5 tells us which volume to look for.
• Then finally, this is document number 422.