Doc Center question 3/9/05

Question (as asked): "I need to find the price of whale meat for the past few decades."

Question (as negotiated with librarian): "I need statistical indicators to measure the success (or failure) of the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling (1946)."

Answer:
1) We looked for international statistics, using Lexis Nexis Statistical and the Food & Agriculture Org's (FAO's) databases, but found them unusable, for a number of reasons.
2) We then reasoned that Congress, in its oversight role, was likely to have held hearings from time to time, assessing the effectiveness of this treaty, to which the U.S. is a party.
3) We searched for hearings in Lexis Nexis Congressional, using the name of the treaty as our search term. Bingo! There were several hearings, and upon opening them we found that various witnesses had come armed with statistical data designed to shed light on the question, Is the treaty working?

Lesson: Congressional hearings can be a useful source of quantitative information designed to assess public policies and programs.