The Legislative Reference Library compiles newspaper clippings relating to legislative duties and official actions of current members of the Texas Legislature, state political events, and any other issues that might be of interest to legislators and legislative staff. Twenty-six Texas newspapers, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal are regularly clipped for articles of interest. The clippings are compiled daily. Newspapers are available in the library for 30 days. Clips from 1998 to the present are available to legislative offices through the Daily Legislative Clipping Service database on the legislative intranet and can be searched by headline, subject, article type, date, newspaper, columnist, bill number, or bill caption keyword. Clips from 1901 to 1998 are available to legislative offices in the clips archive, which is searchable by headline, subject, columnist, newspaper, and date. During the interim, the clipping service also includes notices of house and senate committee public hearings and formal meetings.

The library staff also reviews more than 800 periodicals to compile a weekly Current Articles list and distributes the list electronically to legislators and legislative staff every Thursday. Access to a searchable database of Current Articles abstracts is available to Capitol Complex users through the library’s website. Members and legislative staff can request copies of full-text articles from the library.

Both the clipping service and current articles databases are available to the public through terminals in the library.