7. House and Senate Journals and Senate Executive Journals
House and Senate Journals
The House and Senate Journals are proceedings, or minutes of each of the legislative chambers. There one can find the listing of the House and Senate's official work on bills, resolutions, petitions, and each chamber's votes on them. The Journals have been issued since the first Congress in 1789. The first through the fourteenth Congress Journals were originally published privately and are now digitized (see below), while Journals for later years have been issued as part of the Serial Set (which is more fully described in part 4 of this Research Guide).
| Title/Description | Years | Location |
House Journal (1st- 43d Congress) Senate Journal (1st- 43d Congress) |
1789-1875 | American Memory: A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation; U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates |
Serial Set (15th - 95th Congress) |
1818-1978 |
US Doc 445 (D level Lamont or at HD) |
NewsBank's House and Senate Journals, Series 1, 1789-1817 |
1789-1817 |
|
NewsBank's U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1980 |
1817-1980 (in progress) |
Senate Executive Journals
Senate Executive Journals are records of the closed session meetings, mostly dealing with treaties and nominations. These do not contain any speeches, but only motions and actions.
Senate Executive Journals
| Title/Description | Years | Location |
Senate Executive Journal (1st-43d Congress) |
1789-1875 |
|
| Senate Executive Session Journals (currently 1st-66th Congress) Projected to eventually cover through 1980 (96th Congress) | 1789-1921 | Readex Senate Executive Journals, 1789-1921 |
Page Last Reviewed: September 16, 2008