The CIS Index Accession Number System
(Excerpted from CIS User Guide)
HOW THE
CIS INDEX ACCESSION
NUMBER SYSTEM WORKS
HEARINGS, PRINTS,
REPORTS, AND DOCUMENTS
The CIS Index accession number system is based on the
fact that congressional publications covered by CIS Index
fall into one of the basic types described above, and that
most can be associated with a particular congressional
committee or office. Within each calendar year, CIS Index
assigns accession numbers to publications according to
issuing body, and within that body, by publication type.
Hearings, prints, and most reports are issued directly
by committees or offices and present no problem in this
respect. Documents are issued by the House or Senate
as a whole, but most are either referred to the specific
committee which has legislative jurisdiction, or else emanate
from a specific committee in the first place. CIS Index
assigns these documents to the referenced or originating
committee. (House and Senate Documents and special
publications which do not relate to any specific committee
are assigned separate code numbers established for this
purpose.)
Conference committee reports are normally issued by
the committee from which the House managers have
come.
CIS Index accession numbers are based on 3-character
codes which remain constant from year to year. The
letter in these codes indicates the parent body (H for House,
J for Joint, S for Senate), and the remaining two digits
identify the committee office or special category. For example,
all documents concerning the Senate Finance
Committee are numbered in the S36 series. A last code
digit is added to the committee code for each document to
indicate the publication type:
0 = House or Senate Document or Special
Publication
1 = Hearing
2 = Committee Print
3 = House or Senate Report
4 = Senate Executive Report
5 = Senate Treaty Document
Following this system then:
S361 = A Senate Finance Committee hearings
volume.
Every abstract number begins with a similar 4-character
code, followed by a dash and a serial number. Thus:
S361-24 = The twenty-fourth volume of hearings
from the Senate Finance Committee abstracted during
a given year.
In the case of hearings testimony abstracts, a "decimal
number" is added to identify each individual item of testimony.
Thus:
S361-24.1 = The first item of testimony abstracted
in this volume of hearings.
The abstracts contained in CIS Index are arranged by
number in ascending order. All index references give the
specific CIS Index abstract accession number for the item
indexed.
For ease in referring from index to abstracts, every page
of abstracts volumes carries "locator" numbers in the upper
right and left corners.