FAQs About Congressional Research Digital Collection

Why don't I see my search term in bold type in Expanded View, Full View, or FOCUS search results?

If you used the "All Fields Including Full Text" option in the drop-down list, it is possible that your search terms appear in the full text of the document but are not mentioned in the metadata. If that is the case, your search terms will not appear in bold in the Expanded View, Full View, and FOCUS options.

Why aren't the page numbers in the PDFs and the page numbers in the source publications the same?

The PDFs provide collation numbers that represent the total number of pages within each publication. In the case of very short publications, there is frequently no difference between the collation and the pagination, but longer publications often have multiple pagination schemes. This is especially true of publications that contain front matter, illustrations, maps, appendices, attachments, or exhibits. In order to provide the user with documents that are fully portable (i.e., able to exist on their own away from the vendor's server), it is necessary to deliver the publications as fully functional PDFs, and PDFs only allow for the total number of digital pages in any given publication.

Troubleshooting PDFs

If a blank screen results after clicking a PDF link, check your version of Adobe Reader. A free reader compatible with your specific operating system is available at www.adobe.com.

Creating Durable URLs for CRDC PDFs

You can create a unique, durable URL for each searchable PDF in the LexisNexis® Congressional Research Digital Collection.  A durable URL is a direct link that takes the user to the document metadata without requiring a search. The link points to the metadata so that users can decide if they want the entire document, a subset of the document (50-page increments), or if they want to do a different search. Durable URLS can be used in bibliographies or web-bibliographies, and to send links to colleagues via email.

Only the digital collections (LexisNexis U.S. Serial Set Digital collection and LexisNexis Congressional Research Digital Collection) have durable URLs.

The durable URLS are based on a "base" URL and the document identification number (in this case, the CRDC-ID) found at the top of each bibliographic record.

The URL stem used to create durable URLs for CRDC records is:

http://www.lexisnexis.com/congcomp/getdoc?CRDC-ID=

Append the unique identifier found in the metadata for the PDF you are bookmarking after the equal sign in the URL stem. The unique identifier is the CRDC-ID assigned to the record.

Example:

If you want to bookmark Congressional Research Digital Collection record number CRS-2003-RSI-0042, the URL would be:

http://www.lexisnexis.com/congcomp/getdoc?CRDC-ID=CRS-2003-RSI-0042