The Library of Congress released a new website for federal legislative information last week. The site is a public beta site for accessing free, fact-based legislative information. Eventually the site will replace the THOMAS system, which has been in use since 1995. The Congress.gov site includes bill status and summary, bill text and member profiles and other new features like comprehensive searching across bill text, summary and statuses; persistent URLs for search results; Members' legislative history and biographical profiles; and maintenance of existing features such as links to video of the House and Senate floor, top searched bills and the save/share feature. The site also features several new multimedia presentations on the legislative process.
Data for the information system is provided by multiple legislative branch partners in this effort, including the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms, the Office of the Chief Administrative Office of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Government Printing Office.
This website will be featured in the Laws and Legislative Resources class offered by the State Library on Tuesday, October 2 at 9:30 am. The class is free and open to the public. Register here. You can read the News Release about Congress.gov from the Library of Congress.
For more information, contact Elaine Sandberg at 803-734-8625 or esandberg@statelibrary.sc.gov.
