available and by telephoning committee and congressional office staff members. No information is received automatically.

The Digest and the supplements are produced from the ISAM-BDAM file. An ALC program was written to produce the Digest. The Digest can be generated by sections or by combining sections together as desired. The program can also selectively retrieve bills or ranges of bills by bill number.

At best, the Digest is one week late as GPO requires at least one week for printing. There have been some complaints when there were delays. Library of Congress personnel feel that the Senators and Representatives want status information that is up-to-date and that they can use in lieu of making multiple phone calls and since the Action Section of the Digest is not up-to-date, CRS feels that its value is

diminished.

CRS does feel that the Sponsor Index, which lists by Congressmen and Senators, all the bills and resolutions sponsored categorized by subject, is very valuable to the Congressmen and Senators.

In addition to the Digest, an on-line display system using CICS was developed. This provides for displaying any of the items in the

furnished. No other retrieval is available. There are some plans

to invert more than one item and permit retrieval on other items, but there is nothing definite yet.

On-line update is also being discussed as a possibility for the future.

3.2 The Legislative Status Report

The Legislative Status Report provides a summary and the status of selected major legislation pending or passed by the Congress. Measures included are chosen by virtue of their substantive importance and their likelihood of receiving significant Congressional attention. The Status Report is produced cumulatively and is issued

each month.

The Status Report draws together in a single source, some of the information contained in the Daily Digest, the Calendar of the House of Representatives and the Digest of Public General Bills and Resolutions. It does not, however, replace any of these sources of

information.

The Status Report consists of some 350 selected bills and resolutions, arranged by subject. Included with each is bill title, bill number, a digest (which is different from the digest appearing in the Digest),

Status Report which differ from the Digest are the list of selected
Presidential Messages and a table showing actions taken by Congress
on selected Appropriation Bills.

The Status Report is produced from the ATS data base used in the
generation of the Digest. A list containing the number of the bills
and resolutions being followed by the various CRS divisions is
maintained and used to generate a file which is a subset of the
Bill Digest Data Base. Since these bills and resolutions are being
followed by different CRS divisions, the Status Report digest field
is not the same as that appearing in the Digest of Public General
The file created is input to a COBOL program

Bills and Resolutions.

which generates the Status Report.

3.3 The Legislative Status Checklist

The "checklist" is issued weekly as an updated version of the front
section of the Legislative Status Report. In addition to providing

the status of selected major legislation, an updated list of the

major Presidential Messages and the table of selected Appropria-

tion Bills is also included.

The "checklist" is arranged by general subject categories. The action

indicated includes hearings, date of report, passage, referral to

The "checklist" and the Status Report follow the same legislation
and the grouping of the bills by subject and their sequencing is the

same.

The 'checklist" is prepared manually. The previous week's check-
list is updated and a new data file generated using ATS. The ATS
file is then used to produce the necessary mats for multi-lith
reproduction at the Library of Congress. The ATS file is neither
saved nor updated. Each week, a completely new ATS file is

generated.

3.4 Additional CRS Products

In addition to the three documents produced by CRS described in
the preceding paragraphs, there are additional CRS products which
posses varying degrees of relevancy to legislative research and/or

status. These are:

"Green Sheets", issued monthly and provide a listing of
all multi-lithed CRS reports completed as a result of a
Congressional inquiry. The reports listed are those which
are judged to be of possible interest to other parties and
are not confidential.

Subject Catalog, issued every six months and contains a
listing of all CRS multi-lithed reports.

SDI Printed cards which are computer-generated cards
circulated by requested SDI subject on a regular basis

Author and Subject Catalogues are issued monthly, and cumulated quarterly. The catalogues include subsets of the 22,000 bibliographic citations put in the files each year which describe significant CRS studies, periodic articles, government documents, and private university reports related to public issues.

Congressional Hearings, Reports, Documents and
Committee Prints is produced by the Library Services
Division of CRS. This publication is issued weekly
and is arranged by the issuing Committed unless some
other author or organization was responsible for com-
piling the information, in which case it is listed alpha-
betically under the name of the author or organization.
For each publication there is a brief statement of its
subject matter, the type of publication, the bill
(resolution) number relating to the publication, the
document number of the publication, and the date of
publication.

4.0 Committee Calendar Service

The CRS Information Systems Group offers a special service to
Congressional Committees in the area of calendar preparation.
This service allows interested committees to store and maintain

a computer file containing their committee calendar information.
The calendar data is input, both new records and modifications
to existing records, utilizing ATS and a terminal located in a

committee office.

Committees interested in utilizing this service are assisted by the ISG. The assistance includes feasibility studies, training, temporary use of a terminal, etc. The committees are required