This series contains original volumes of records of the Senate of the Georgia General Assembly. The legislative power of the State is vested in the General Assembly which consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Within these important volumes are the bills and resolutions that eventually may become the laws of the State. Both houses of the legislature produce legislation in the form of bills and resolutions and these volumes trace their movement from one house to the other. At the front of each volume is an index listing by surname the senator and the bill and/or resolution he or she either introduced or helped move for passage. This index is of prime interest to researchers and one of the main sources of information regarding these volumes. Following the index, the bills and/or resolutions are listed by number with their author(s), their titles and specific content, the number of times and dates they were read before both houses, the number of ayes and nays they received, the committee to which the legislation was referred, the date it was sent to the Governor and the date it became law if indeed it did. With two exceptions, all bills and resolutions originate in either the Senate or the House, but all legislation must be passed by both branches. Therefore, both houses create four volumes each or eight volumes per session. The volumes produced are usually entitled House Bills, House Resolutions, Senate Bills and Senate Resolutions. Where the bills and/or resolutions are read, in either Senate or House, determines under which house of the legislature they are calendared and in which series they are located. However, in some rare earlier cases, both bills and resolutions of either house or both houses of the legislature are contained in one volume. Because of this switching over from Senate to House, one can become confused as to which bills and resolutions are under which calendar. For instance, is a particular house or senate bill or resolution in the House or the Senate? Also adding to the confusion is the fact that the bindery in some earlier years mislabelled some calendars as being the wrong house or for the wrong year. There are several calendars of extraordinary sessions or when the session overran its legally allotted time. The General Assembly now usually convenes for two year sessions divided into annual sittings of not more than 40 days each. The sessions are numbered consecutively from the first held in 1777. The number of years per session however, has varied widely since the beginning. A rule of thumb for recent sessions is that the first sitting occurs on an odd numbered year and the second on an even numbered year.