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Federal legislative histories: An annotated bibliography and index to officially published sources
74
Reviews
The tables are easy to read as compared with official census publications. Clear type, italicizing, and bolding are used effectively. The table of contents and introduction are both clear and precise. The American T&y is intended to be consulted for simple, quick, basic reference-level questions, and complements official census materials. It is a companion to, and overlaps with, two other sources Toucan Valley Publications has recently published: 1990 Census Snapshot for All U.S. Places and American Small City Projiles. The American Tally is quick and easy to use should the data element you need be included. However, the statistics provided in this work are limited. To find more detailed raw numbers, the patron must consult the official census publications. For many, The American Tally will be insufficient; but official sources may well offer too much information. Still, it is a valuable tool for those libraries that do not have the equipment to run the STF 3C CDROM or for those that have an extensive census collection, but need it in an easier to read format. DEBBIE KALVEE Elmer E. Rasmuson Library University of Alaska Fairbanks Fairbanks, AK 99775-6810 USA
Federal Legislative Histories: An Annotated Bibliography and Index to Officially Published Sources. (Bibliographies and Indexes in Law and Political Science, no. 21.) Compiled by Bernard D. Reams, Jr. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. 595~. ISBN o-313-23092-7. LCCN 93-38809. $99.50. This reference book lists and describes 257 federally published legislative histories of United States statutes from the 4th Congress, first session (1796) through the 1Olst (1991). The compiler, Bernard D. Reams Jr., is a professor of law, a professor of technology management, and director of the law library at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Reams’ previously published works include legislative histories of the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Most of the legislative histories listed in this bibliography were issued as congressional committee prints or as publications of the Congressional Research Service and a few are publications of federal executive agencies. Each entry gives the title of the act covered in addition to its public law number, bill number, Statrtfes at Large citation, title of the legislative history, its author, pagination, and Library of Congress card, OCLC, and Superintendent of Documents numbers. To help users locate these histories in commercially published microform collections, CIS (Congressional Information Service, Inc.) and UPA (University Publications of America) numbers are listed where applicable. Relevant congressional bill numbers are also provided. An annotation for each legislative history summarizes its content and organization, indicates what public laws are covered, explains the depth and order of coverage, describes the documentation provided, and indicates what indexes are included. The bibliography itself is indexed by author, popular name (taken from West’s United States Code Annotated, Lawyers Co-Operative’s United States Code Service and Shepard’s Acts and Cases by Popular Names), congressional session, public law number, bill number, and Statutes at Large citation. This information is fully explained in an introductory user’s guide and table (p. xxi-xxvi). Legislative documentation is often used to clarify language in statutory law. Reams’ brief introduction sketches the evolving and sometimes conflicting views on the use of legislative histories in Britain and the United States. He notes that legislative histories came to be considered unreliable in determining statutory intent as early as the mid-eighteenth century, when the English Parliament assumed its currently predominant and unique role in developing statutes. This rule of statutory construction, known as the Plain Meaning Rule, directed jurists to construe intent only from the final wording of statutes. The United States Supreme Court followed this tradition from its earliest decisions through most of the nineteenth century. Reams notes that the Plain Meaning Rule came to be used less frequently in the United States by the end of the nineteenth century, when references to legislative documentation began to appear in Supreme Court opinions. This was due in part to the increasing public availability of debates, hearings, and other legislative materials (supplied not only to inform constituents, but often to impress and attract political support from them). The use of legislative histories is today a common
Reviews
75
and accepted legal practice. In contrast to this trend, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has attacked attempts to “reconstruct legislators’ intentions” into de facto statutes that are immune from executive veto (p. xvi). Reams’ footnotes in the introductory section are helpful for one wishing to gather more insight into these arguments. Half the 257 items cited in Reams’ bibliography are legislative histories of public laws passed in 1969 or earlier, providing an essential supplement to the CZS Index, which began with coverage of the 91st Congress in 1970 and has included a separate volume of legislative histories since 1985. The sources covered for the years of overlap with the CZS Index differ, since Reams’ bibliography lists sources that analyze and reproduce legislative documentation while the CZS Index cites the original documentation and related material such as presidential statements and reports from the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. Federal Legislative Histories is a model reference work in every way and is recommended for collections supporting research in U.S. law and history. PATRICK RAGAINS Reference Librarian Montana State University, Bozeman Bozeman, MT 59717 USA
Service to the Citizens:
Resources Management No. KAP-93- 1.
Project Report. By U.S. General Services Administration, Information Service. Washington DC: General Services Administration, 1993. 8p. GAO
Improving both the quality and effectiveness of government services to citizens has been a high priority of the Clinton administration. The recent Report of the National Performance Review detailed the administration’s plan to “make government work better and cost less” [l]. This concept of reinventing government services to benefit both the citizens and the federal budget is the basis for the Service to the Citizens: Project Report from the Information Resources Management Service (IRMS) of the General Services Administration (GSA). Service to the Citizens: Project Report is the result of the Service to the Citizens task force, an interagency group of individuals assigned the task of examining 10 major government programs in three areas and making recommendations for improvement of these programs. The report consists of an executive summary outlining the purpose of the task force as well as its findings and recommendations and case studies, located in appendices A, B, and C, of the three program areas that were analyzed by the task force. The introduction to the executive summary contains information on participants in the task force, their names and affiliations (two of the participants were from programs within the Department of the Treasury (Customs and the IRS), the third participant was from the GSA), and identifies the three major areas that were studied: retirement benefits, mortgages, and business loans. The main body of the executive summary lists the findings of the task force. These include: (1) federal agencies are becoming more customer service-oriented; (2) agency use of technology for customer service improvements have focused on internal improvements to systems and processes; (3) external use of technology for customer service is limited; (4) federal agencies have a stovepipe focus with limited partnerships between similar service providers; and (5) citizens turn to nonfederal sources for information on federal programs (p. 3-4). It also lists the task force recommendations. The five recommendations are: (1) improve internal management processes; (2) provide citizens more choices and easier ways of getting information and services; (3) increase partnerships among federal agencies; (4) increase partnerships with local governments and other service providers; (5) and comments on the GSA role as facilitator (p. 5-8). Appendix A covers Federal Government Retirement Programs. These are listed as civil service, foreign service, military, railroad, and social security. There are over 40 million beneficiaries of these programs (p. A-l). In studying these programs, the Service to the Citizens task force conducted interviews with program managers, examined the number and types of contacts with citizens who were inquiring about the programs, and held on-site investigations at various offices around the country. In all cases, the task force recommended the use of technology and/or upgrading currently used computer systems to meet the needs of the programs beneficiaries. However, the task force cautioned the managers of these programs to take care in developing highly advanced technological systems that would make it difficult for some users to gain access to information (p. A-14).
Reviews
The tables are easy to read as compared with official census publications. Clear type, italicizing, and bolding are used effectively. The table of contents and introduction are both clear and precise. The American T&y is intended to be consulted for simple, quick, basic reference-level questions, and complements official census materials. It is a companion to, and overlaps with, two other sources Toucan Valley Publications has recently published: 1990 Census Snapshot for All U.S. Places and American Small City Projiles. The American Tally is quick and easy to use should the data element you need be included. However, the statistics provided in this work are limited. To find more detailed raw numbers, the patron must consult the official census publications. For many, The American Tally will be insufficient; but official sources may well offer too much information. Still, it is a valuable tool for those libraries that do not have the equipment to run the STF 3C CDROM or for those that have an extensive census collection, but need it in an easier to read format. DEBBIE KALVEE Elmer E. Rasmuson Library University of Alaska Fairbanks Fairbanks, AK 99775-6810 USA
Federal Legislative Histories: An Annotated Bibliography and Index to Officially Published Sources. (Bibliographies and Indexes in Law and Political Science, no. 21.) Compiled by Bernard D. Reams, Jr. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. 595~. ISBN o-313-23092-7. LCCN 93-38809. $99.50. This reference book lists and describes 257 federally published legislative histories of United States statutes from the 4th Congress, first session (1796) through the 1Olst (1991). The compiler, Bernard D. Reams Jr., is a professor of law, a professor of technology management, and director of the law library at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Reams’ previously published works include legislative histories of the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Most of the legislative histories listed in this bibliography were issued as congressional committee prints or as publications of the Congressional Research Service and a few are publications of federal executive agencies. Each entry gives the title of the act covered in addition to its public law number, bill number, Statrtfes at Large citation, title of the legislative history, its author, pagination, and Library of Congress card, OCLC, and Superintendent of Documents numbers. To help users locate these histories in commercially published microform collections, CIS (Congressional Information Service, Inc.) and UPA (University Publications of America) numbers are listed where applicable. Relevant congressional bill numbers are also provided. An annotation for each legislative history summarizes its content and organization, indicates what public laws are covered, explains the depth and order of coverage, describes the documentation provided, and indicates what indexes are included. The bibliography itself is indexed by author, popular name (taken from West’s United States Code Annotated, Lawyers Co-Operative’s United States Code Service and Shepard’s Acts and Cases by Popular Names), congressional session, public law number, bill number, and Statutes at Large citation. This information is fully explained in an introductory user’s guide and table (p. xxi-xxvi). Legislative documentation is often used to clarify language in statutory law. Reams’ brief introduction sketches the evolving and sometimes conflicting views on the use of legislative histories in Britain and the United States. He notes that legislative histories came to be considered unreliable in determining statutory intent as early as the mid-eighteenth century, when the English Parliament assumed its currently predominant and unique role in developing statutes. This rule of statutory construction, known as the Plain Meaning Rule, directed jurists to construe intent only from the final wording of statutes. The United States Supreme Court followed this tradition from its earliest decisions through most of the nineteenth century. Reams notes that the Plain Meaning Rule came to be used less frequently in the United States by the end of the nineteenth century, when references to legislative documentation began to appear in Supreme Court opinions. This was due in part to the increasing public availability of debates, hearings, and other legislative materials (supplied not only to inform constituents, but often to impress and attract political support from them). The use of legislative histories is today a common
Reviews
75
and accepted legal practice. In contrast to this trend, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has attacked attempts to “reconstruct legislators’ intentions” into de facto statutes that are immune from executive veto (p. xvi). Reams’ footnotes in the introductory section are helpful for one wishing to gather more insight into these arguments. Half the 257 items cited in Reams’ bibliography are legislative histories of public laws passed in 1969 or earlier, providing an essential supplement to the CZS Index, which began with coverage of the 91st Congress in 1970 and has included a separate volume of legislative histories since 1985. The sources covered for the years of overlap with the CZS Index differ, since Reams’ bibliography lists sources that analyze and reproduce legislative documentation while the CZS Index cites the original documentation and related material such as presidential statements and reports from the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. Federal Legislative Histories is a model reference work in every way and is recommended for collections supporting research in U.S. law and history. PATRICK RAGAINS Reference Librarian Montana State University, Bozeman Bozeman, MT 59717 USA
Service to the Citizens:
Resources Management No. KAP-93- 1.
Project Report. By U.S. General Services Administration, Information Service. Washington DC: General Services Administration, 1993. 8p. GAO
Improving both the quality and effectiveness of government services to citizens has been a high priority of the Clinton administration. The recent Report of the National Performance Review detailed the administration’s plan to “make government work better and cost less” [l]. This concept of reinventing government services to benefit both the citizens and the federal budget is the basis for the Service to the Citizens: Project Report from the Information Resources Management Service (IRMS) of the General Services Administration (GSA). Service to the Citizens: Project Report is the result of the Service to the Citizens task force, an interagency group of individuals assigned the task of examining 10 major government programs in three areas and making recommendations for improvement of these programs. The report consists of an executive summary outlining the purpose of the task force as well as its findings and recommendations and case studies, located in appendices A, B, and C, of the three program areas that were analyzed by the task force. The introduction to the executive summary contains information on participants in the task force, their names and affiliations (two of the participants were from programs within the Department of the Treasury (Customs and the IRS), the third participant was from the GSA), and identifies the three major areas that were studied: retirement benefits, mortgages, and business loans. The main body of the executive summary lists the findings of the task force. These include: (1) federal agencies are becoming more customer service-oriented; (2) agency use of technology for customer service improvements have focused on internal improvements to systems and processes; (3) external use of technology for customer service is limited; (4) federal agencies have a stovepipe focus with limited partnerships between similar service providers; and (5) citizens turn to nonfederal sources for information on federal programs (p. 3-4). It also lists the task force recommendations. The five recommendations are: (1) improve internal management processes; (2) provide citizens more choices and easier ways of getting information and services; (3) increase partnerships among federal agencies; (4) increase partnerships with local governments and other service providers; (5) and comments on the GSA role as facilitator (p. 5-8). Appendix A covers Federal Government Retirement Programs. These are listed as civil service, foreign service, military, railroad, and social security. There are over 40 million beneficiaries of these programs (p. A-l). In studying these programs, the Service to the Citizens task force conducted interviews with program managers, examined the number and types of contacts with citizens who were inquiring about the programs, and held on-site investigations at various offices around the country. In all cases, the task force recommended the use of technology and/or upgrading currently used computer systems to meet the needs of the programs beneficiaries. However, the task force cautioned the managers of these programs to take care in developing highly advanced technological systems that would make it difficult for some users to gain access to information (p. A-14).