Congressional Research Service Reports

Top Resources | Other Major Report Collections | CRS Reports by Subject | CRS Report Abstracts

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), which is part of the Library of Congress, serves Congress by providing it with in-depth, nonpartisan research on a wide range of topics, many of which are of current interest.  Topics run the gamut from the Patriot Act to the death penalty to the history of the American Flag. 

Unfortunately, Congress does not make these reports widely available to the public and are generally only available from members of Congress upon request.  That said, there are a number of sources on the Internet that have made CRS reports available for free.  Below you will find a list of these sources.

• Open CRS
  • A project of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, Open CRS is attempting to collect and provide access to as many CRS reports as possible.  The site currently has nearly 10,000 reports in its collection.
•  University of North Texas
  • The UNT has compiled a large collection of CRS reports issued since 1990.  You can browse the collection by topic or you can search by keyword, title, author, subject or report number. 
• CRS Google Search
  • Zfacts.com has created three different predefined Google searches for CRS reports.  You can perform a basic keyword search for the reports or you can perform two more specialized searches, one by report number and another that will search for reports that have been converted into HTML or some other non-PDF format. 

• Air War College Library

  • Assorted reports organized by topic on issues generally related to American government and law, international relations and homeland security. 
• Cornell University's Catherwood Library

  • CRS reports on a wide range of workplace issues. 
• Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
  • "The FAS collection of CRS reports. . . primarily addresses national security, foreign policy and related topics."
• Franklin Pierce Law Center IP Mall

  • Find reports back to 1993 dealing with intellectual property, cyberlaw and electronic commerce.
• GlobalSecurity.org

  • A collection of reports mainly focused on national security and international relations.
• House of Representatives Rules Committee

  • CRS Reports on Congress, its rules and procedures.
• Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C.

  • "Selected Congressional Research Service reports on Congress and its procedures."
• National Agricultural Law Center
  • Reports related to agriculture and food issues.
• National Library for the Environment

  • This collection is focused on reports on environmental issues.
• Naval Postgraduate School, Dudly Knox Library
  • A large collection of CRS reports on a wide range of topics, arranged chronologically.
• Thurgood Marshall Law Library (University of Maryland School of Law)
  • The focus of this collection is on Homeland Security/Terrorism and Health Policy & Law.
• U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Italy

  • Reports related to international relations and U.S. policy on variety of issues.
• U.S. State Department
  • Reports related to terrorism.

• Penny Hill Press
  • Browse for abstracts of ALL CRS reports issued since 1995.  Reports are organized by subject area.  Note: Reports are not available for free from this resource.
  • Once you find a report, search for its title in one of the above resources. 
  • If you cannot find the report available for free online, you can request a copy of the report from your Congressional representative's office.