Congressional Documents, hearings, etc.

peter.erickson

I've spent some time trying to see if there is a clear and concise explanation of which item types and how to cite things such as Congressional testimony of witnesses, the Constitution, Congressional Reports, etc.

Does anyone have a recommended source that explains this clearly? I'm particularly interested in Congressional testimony and basic reports printed by the Congressional Research Service, Government Printing Office, etc. Thanks.

adamsmith

Do you mean how they should be cited or how they should be entered in Zotero? These aren't types of materials that Zotero would tend to cite terribly precisely given rather specialized requirements (Congressional reports I think should come out fine as reports). If you just want examples of citations, getting a trial subscription for Chicago Manual (or checking if you have access through your university if applicable) would likely be the easiest.

bwiernik

I would use Report for the congressional reports and Hearing for the hearings or their transcripts.

Currently, the Hearing type is mapped to “bill”. A proper ‘hearing’ citation type is available in the new CSL version 1.0.2. You can change Zotero to use that by adding “type: hearing” to the top of Extra.

CSL styles aren’t updated to use 1.0.2 yet, so you will need to edit the style if it’s urgent. What style are you using?

peter.erickson

Thanks. I'm using the American Political Science Association Style right now, and for the most part, that works fine for the very basic sorts of citations that I come across.

Every now and then, I do need to cite some very basic testimonies, bills, the Constitution, etc., and sometimes these throw me for a loop.

Do updates to new versions (such as 1.0.2) occur automatically, or that a manual fix I need to go in and make?

Thanks for the help.

adamsmith

Updates to citation styles and CSL versions will all happen in the background, nothing you need to do.

In a future version, Zotero will also add additional fields and item types and that'll be more visible

peter.erickson

Thanks for the help. I'll continue to give it a shot and come back if I have any further questions.