You do not need to enter a valid term to begin browsing at a particular point in the index. If your word does not appear in the database, you will be taken to the word in the text index that most closely matches the term you typed. If you cannot find your word in the index and you feel certain it should be there, check your spelling, or try an alternate spelling, e.g. khadaffi - quadaffi.)

Use the Text Index to Refine Your Search
Browsing the term index may be a valuable quality control check on the depth and precision of your search. For example, in the 105th Congress, Congressional Record search page, enter the text string telecommut in the Words in the Database box and press Display. You will see a list of all words that begin with this text string. There is one document with the word "telecommuter" in the 105th Congressional Record database and five with the word telecommuters. However, there were 43 documents with mentions of the word telecommuting. The lesson learned from browsing the text index is that, for this Congressional Record file, a word/phrase search on telecommuting is many times more productive than a search with either of the other words. Better yet, in your word/phrase search, search all variations of a term by using the "wildcard" character, or right-hand truncation symbol * -- e.g., telecommut*. The resulting display will show all records having word(s) beginning with the character string telecommut -- .

An exact-word/phrase search on telephone in the Congressional Record database (105th Congress) retrieves a set of 1124 documents.¹ However, examining the text index beginning with the text string telephon reveals that there were 1329 records with word(s) beginning with the letters telephon -- including telephone, telephoned, telephones, telephonic, telephonically, telephoning, telephony. Thus, for a more complete search, use the wildcard capability in your word/phrase search box: telephon*.

Examining the Records Containing Your Word
Once you have located your word by displaying a portion of the text index, you can retrieve the documents in which it was used by clicking on the hotlinked word itself. The resulting brief display will show documents containing your word for that database (Text of Legislation, Congressional Record Text or Committee Reports).

If You Get Unexpected Results...
Use the Clear button to delete any previous searches or entries into any of the other search boxes on the page and try again.

Your Thoughts
Please feel free to contact us if you find an error, have a question or a suggestion for improvement. Just click on the Feedback button at the bottom of this page.

You can increase the number of documents returned (up to 2000) by entering that number in the box labeled "Specify number of items to be returned." However, specifying a very large number will considerably slow retrieval, while specifying a very small number may miss relevant documents.