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Search for Center for Legislative Archives Records

Descriptions for the records held by the Center are available via the Archival Research Catalog (ARC).

Please note that not all congressional records are in ARC. Contact legislative.archives@nara.gov for more information.

Put topics and concepts with more than one word in quotes for an exact phrase search.
- Example: "Civil War"
Try people's names in quotes in natural and reverse order.
- Example: "Thomas Jefferson" OR "Jefferson, Thomas"
Use the search wildcard (*) at the end of a word to catch variant word endings, verb tenses, or plural versions of words.
- Example: slave* (This search will return hits for slavery, slaves, or slave.)
If you are only interested in House of Representatives or Senate records, add those keywords to your search. You can use parentheses to nest terms.
- Example: "U.S. House of Representatives" AND agricultur*
- Example: "U.S. Senate" AND (slave* OR "Civil War")