Getting Started
The Legislative Process is a series of short videos (with text transcripts) from Congress.gov.
How Our Laws Are Made, issued by the House of Representatives, describes the steps in the consideration of a bill and the documents produced at each step of the legislative process.
Numbers and Dates of Congressional Sessions
Congressional Committees
Committees of the U.S. Congress
Reports: Congressional reports deal with proposed legislation or issues under investigation. Different types of congressional committees issue different types of reports, including committee reports, conference reports, and executive reports.
House Committee Hearings and Meetings Video 
Congress.gov provides access to live and archived webcasts of some House committee hearings, markups, and other meetings. For each committee, live streams appear if the committee is currently broadcasting. Otherwise, a list of previous video appears.
Constitutional Authority
See this quick video on how to find out what the constitutional authority is for a congressional bill.
Voting
Congress.gov
To locate federal legislation, you will want to use the website Congress.gov. Congress.gov is the official resource for federal legislation. (It replaced a website called Thomas that you might have used or heard about).
When you get to the main page, the search box at the top center is where you can type in either some keywords related to your topic, or the bill number if you are looking for a specific bill.
For example, if I wanted to see all the bills in this congress that have been introduced related to the keystone pipeline, I could just type in "keystone pipeline". It is good to put an exact phrase like this in quotation marks. It will improve the accuracy of your results.
To find bills in a particular policy area, for example, recent bills on health care, go to the advanced searches link at the top, scroll down to SUBJECTS-policy area, check the box next to "health" then click APPLY and then SEARCH.
See the video in the box below this one for more on how to search this resource.
Video: Researching federal legislation
Federal Legislation and Congress
- Congress.govCongress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. It is presented by the Library of Congress (LOC) using data from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, the Government Publishing Office, Congressional Budget Office, and the LOC's Congressional Research Service.
- Congressional RecordThe official daily record of the debates and proceedings of the U.S. Congress.
- FDsysIncludes bills (full-text 1993 forward), history of bills, calendars, documents & reports (full-text 1995 forward), Congressional Record and its Index, public laws (full-text 1994 forward), the U.S. Code, Congressional Directory, and a history of line item veto notices.
- House of Representatives WebsiteIncludes legislative activity, roll call votes, calendars, schedules, committees, and the U.S. Code.
- Legislative Sourcebook (Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C.)Includes a weekly list of newly released hearings, newly enacted public laws, a table of Congressional publication volumes and Presidential issuances, and a guide to the U.S. Serial Set.
- Roll Call Votes by the U.S. CongressHouse floor votes are compiled through the electronic voting machine by the House Tally Clerks under the direction of the Clerk of the House. Senate floor votes are compiled through the Senate Legislative Information System by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate. Learn more about Votes in the House and Senate.
- Senate WebsiteIncludes legislative activity, roll call votes, calendars, schedules, committees, the Congressional Record, and status information on treaties.
Legislative Proces
Source: Library of Congress: https://www.congress.gov/content/legprocess/legislative-process-poster.jpg
Videos on the Legislative Process
The Legislative Process is a set of nine videos that explain the common legislative stages, and that the process by which a bill becomes law is rarely predictable.
U.S. Government Manual
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT MANUAL
As the official handbook of the Federal Government, The United States Government Manual provides information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies; international organizations in which the United States participates; and boards, commissions, and committees. The Manual begins with reprints of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
A typical agency description includes a list of officials heading major operating units, a summary statement of the agency's purpose and role in the Federal Government, a brief history of the agency, including its legislative or executive authority, and a description of its programs and activities, and information, addresses, and phone numbers to help users locate detailed information on consumer activities, contracts and grants, employment, publications, and other matters of public interest.