Congressional and Parliamentary Research Reports

Last week, LLRX.com published a feature article entitled CRS Reports that explained how to locate reports of the Congressional Research Service in the United States, or CRS.

The CRS is the non-partisan public policy research arm of the United States Congress but access to the material it produces can be difficult:

"Each year CRS produces almost 1,000 new products, and over 4,000 updated or revised reports, however only a small number of these are made available to the public on the Internet. Although CRS does maintain an intranet for CRS reports (CRS Web) this network is only accessible by members of Congress, Congressional committees, and CRS sister agencies (e.g. GAO). Members of the public requiring access to these reports have traditionally had to ask their Representative in Congress for paper copies to be mailed to them or have had to purchase them through a third party..."

Access to the publications of the Parliamentary Information and Research Service of the Library of Parliament in Canada is thankfully much easier.

One can:

• Go to the Parliamentary Information and Research Service Publications page in the Virtual Library section of the federal parliamentary website
• Check out the Depository Services Program listing of Library of Parliament publications (up to date up to the beginning of 2006)
• Check the Library of Parliament's LEGISinfo service: for any given bill, for example here Bill C-2 (Accountability Act), there is a link called Legislative Summary in the "About This Bill" section that links to the Library of Parliament's Legislative Summary

Life is also easier for researchers in other countries. In the United Kingdom, parliamentary research papers are easy to find. The United Kingdom Parliament website has a list of House of Commons Library Research Papers going back to 1998.

The Parliament of Australia has brought together links to the various research and backgrounder publications of its Parliamentary Library. The Library also offers an RSS feed for updates.

Many French parliamentary research documents are available right on the Assemblée nationale website.