In this weekly post, we feature online articles and policy reports published recently, and other helpful research tools.

• Review the costs of long term care. (MetLife, October 2011)
• Consider funding options for emergency communications. (Congressional Research Service, October 4, 2011)
• Read key findings related to the level of stress in America. (American Psychological Association, 2011)
• Check out a 50-State Medicaid budget survey. (Kaiser Family Foundation, October 27, 2011)
• Compare tanning restrictions for minors by state. (National Conference of State Legislatures, October 2011)

This entry was posted on November 10, 2011 at 3:15 PM and has received 1124 views. Print this entry.

Who represented Travis County in the House and Senate in 1905?  What were their party affiliations?  Which Senate and House districts did Travis County belong to that year?

If you're researching questions like these, you may want to check the library's Texas Legislators: Past & Present database. We've recently added information about the counties represented by each member of the Legislature, allowing you to find things like all members who have represented all or part of a county since the county's creation, or which counties were in a particular member's district at any given time. While you're researching, keep in mind that county boundaries have shifted over the years. Bexar County used to include all of west Texas, along with parts of New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado.  In the database, members are linked to the counties as they were at the time the member was elected, not as they are today. If you need information on historical county boundaries, a great source to look at is the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

In addition to county information, we've also added party affiliation for members back to the 12th Legislature (1870), making it possible to see the party breakdown in any one session back to that cutoff date, or to view the party affiliation of any member in particular. As with the county information, party information reflects the member's affiliation at the time he/she was elected.  We are currently researching and verifying party affiliations, so if a member's record does not yet include that information, it will be added as it becomes available.

This entry was posted on November 8, 2011 at 4:22 PM and has received 1427 views. Print this entry.

This entry was posted on November 1, 2011 at 11:41 AM and has received 1868 views. Print this entry.

In our ongoing research for the Texas Legislators database, we often uncover interesting bits of Texas legal history. Recently, two early legislators stood out for their pioneering role in the history of the Texas Supreme Court. Brothers Oliver Cromwell Hartley (House of Representatives, 4th Legislature) and Rufus K. Hartley (House of Representatives, 8th Legislature; Texas Senate, 9th-10th Legislatures) not only had legislative careers, but were involved as reporters of Texas Supreme Court decisions.  In 1846, six years after the Supreme Court had its first term, the state began appointing court reporters to publish the decisions of the court. Oliver Cromwell Hartley was appointed that year as court reporter, and held the position until his death in 1859. Both brothers' names can be seen in early volumes of the Texas Reports, which were the only source of Supreme Court opinions until the appearance of the Southwestern Reporter in 1886. 

In addition to their work with the Texas Supreme Court, the Hartley brothers published Digest of Texas Laws in 1850.  The digest comprised "all the public laws of the republic and state of Texas, which are now in force, except Acts for the incorporation of cities and towns, and the establishment of counties…" This compilation of Texas statutes greatly aided lawyers and legislators at the time, since no official collection of Texas laws had yet been published.

If you're interested in learning more about Oliver Cromwell Hartley or Rufus K. Hartley, you can view their member records in our Texas Legislators: Past & Present database.

 

Oliver Cromwell Hartley			Rufus K. Hartley

This entry was posted on October 19, 2011 at 10:32 AM and has received 1782 views. Print this entry.

The library has a new resource that provides access to scanned House and Joint committee minutes from the 63rd-74th Legislatures (1973-1995). You can find it on our website under Committees --> Committee minutes. Senate minutes for the 63rd-74th Legislatures (1973-1995) are currently being scanned and will be added as completed. More recent minutes for the 75th Legislature (1997) to the present are available from Texas Legislature Online Committees.
 
Minutes summarize committee proceedings and record the time and place of each meeting, members present, bills considered, witness lists, and votes taken. Minutes typically do not contain transcriptions of discussions or testimony.  For information on how to access that information, see the library's Legislative Intent Guide under Audio Recordings of Legislative Discussion.

This entry was posted on October 11, 2011 at 10:15 AM and has received 1047 views. Print this entry.

This entry was posted on September 14, 2011 at 2:00 PM and has received 1780 views. Print this entry.

We're pleased to announce that Mary Camp, director of the Texas Legislative Reference Library, was recently elected chair of the Research Librarians Section of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

Composed primarily of librarians and information specialists in legislative agencies nationwide, the group provides a forum for the exchange of ideas relating to legislative research and library management. The section sponsors an extensive schedule of programs at the NCSL Legislative Summit each year as well as an annual professional development seminar.  Both focus on current developments in information management, technology and legislative information. In addition, the group each year presents Notable Documents awards to recognize excellence in publications that explore topics of interest to legislators and staff and that use innovative techniques in formatting and presentation.  The Texas Legislative Reference Library was recently honored with two Notable Document awards for its Texas Water Law Timeline and Texas Legislators: Past & Present database.

Mary replaces Shelley Day of the Utah Legislative Research Library.  The new chair-elect is Eddie Weeks of the Tennessee Legislative Library and the new secretary is Sabah Eltareb of the California Research Bureau.  Congratulations to all.

This entry was posted on August 30, 2011 at 2:26 PM and has received 1709 views. Print this entry.

You can find almost anything in Google, but have you ever wondered if you're searching in the most efficient way? If so, take a look at some of the tips and shortcuts explained in the links below. Google can do amazing things in one click, like find population and unemployment rates, define any word or phrase, or even help you track the status of arriving or departing U.S. flights. It also has the capacity to handle precise word searching, allowing you to narrow your search results and save time.  For learning these tips and tricks, we liked the three websites below, however additional information can be found by visiting Google's Inside Search Features page.

Google Search Features: Learn about the different types of information you can find in one click, as well as more advanced search techniques like searching on the synonym of your search term, or using the plus (+) operator. 

 
















Basic Search Help: This page contains general recommendations for getting the best out of your Google search. Among other things, the folks at Google suggest keeping your search simple by using as few terms as possible and by using highly descriptive (unique) words.

This entry was posted on August 15, 2011 at 8:00 AM and has received 1785 views. Print this entry.

One of the library's recent acquisitions, a report published by the Houston nonpartisan advocacy group Children at Risk, takes an in-depth look at Texas' new juvenile mental health courts. These specialty courts are designed to aid juvenile offenders who suffer from mental illness. Their focus is on treatment and rehabilitation rather than incarceration. The report, Texas Juvenile Mental Health Courts: An Evaluation and Blueprint for the Future, begins with a concise overview of these specialized systems. It then focuses on four major courts in Austin, El Paso, Harris County, and San Antonio. For each court, the researchers describe the process juvenile offenders go through, the services the court offers, and the potential outcomes of a case. They also provide demographic and offense statistics. Finally, each court is evaluated on success rates and cost-effectiveness. Individual case histories are included throughout this section, adding a personal touch to the numbers. The report's second section lays out a "blueprint for the future." After a brief overview of the advantages of juvenile mental health courts, the authors offer specific, detailed guidance to policymakers and local leaders who are considering establishing these courts in their communities. The discussion takes readers step-by-step through the process of setting up a mental health court system and is punctuated with real-world examples from the courts described in section one. The authors conclude with policy recommendations from various stakeholders and Children at Risk itself. These recommendations address funding, staffing, and evaluation concerns. Along with the rest of the report, they provide a good starting point for those interested in learning more about this new breed of specialty court.

This entry was posted on August 9, 2011 at 9:22 AM and has received 1679 views. Print this entry.

We often get asked if we work when the Legislature is not in session. The answer is: yes. During the interim our staff is busy offering the same services we do during session, including our daily news clipping service, research assistance for legislative staff, state agencies and members of the public, current awareness services such as our weekly Current Articles list, Twitter feed and blog, and our work assembling original bill files. We also spend time enhancing existing library resources and creating new ones. In past interims, we've developed systems to put legislative interim reports, constitutional amendments and governor documents online in searchable databases. Some of our long-term projects, such as our Texas Legislators database, have been ongoing for several years.

A project that we began developing in 2002 and that is also ongoing today is our Legislative Archive System, a project in cooperation with the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to scan and organize original legislative bill files and make them available online. Since its inception, over 100,000 bill files have been scanned and cataloged in the system.  That's all bills from the 76th Legislature (1999) back to the 50th Legislature (1947). We're now scanning bills from the 49th Legislature (1945), and the materials are more fragile and have special handling requirements. Most of the bills, for example, have been for decades folded into thirds. To scan these, it is necessary to first humidify and flatten them. Here are pictures of the equipment we use to do this.

    

While it may be surprising that we use rubber trash cans, bricks and wooden boards to treat these materials, this is a standard procedure used by many libraries and archives.

In addition to our ongoing projects, we're excited to release soon a new resource containing scanned committee minutes from past sessions. Until now, these have been available in hard copy only, so this should be a great help to researchers. Stay tuned for more information about this and other future resources.

This entry was posted on July 27, 2011 at 8:36 AM and has received 1430 views. Print this entry.