Despite all the controversy about Westlaw getting exclusive rights to the digitized legislative histories compiled by the GAO (see e.g. http://dukelawref.blogspot.com/2008/07/who-owns-legislative-history.html), I really didn’t take a close look until I needed some examples for class. There really is a lot of information in that database, and good quality PDF images. On the other hand, there are some questions about coverage, and some really annoying features in the database organization and search facility.

Coverage starts nominally in 1915, but more fully in 1921 (when the GAO was created). Since the GAO was mostly a green-eyeshade operation up until 1970, the legislative histories must have been to help decide if expenditures were proper. In any case, not all statutes have GAO histories. (Class example: ch. 359 of 1948 – nothing in GAO; use USCCAN instead). When a GAO history is available, especially in more recent years, it is extremely detailed, including texts of amendments. The table of contents for the PDFs, however, is broken up into several pages, sometimes with only one or two entries per page. Presumably, this preserves some information about the contents of bound volumes provided by the GAO, but it makes the set unnecessarily hard to use, and may cause some users to go away disappointed, unaware that more is available for the clicking. The default search template can also be frustrating since it doesn’t have a blank to fill in for chapter number. This is a handicap for earlier session laws that are cited only by chapter number.

Take-away: a big step forward in online access to federal legislative history material, but not one-stop shopping, and with room for improvement. -WT