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Now There’s a Congressional Record App for That

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I am very excited that today marks the launch of the Congressional Record App presented by the Library of Congress, an initiative of the House leadership under the guidance of the Committee on House Administration.  The goal of this new free app is straightforward – easily read the daily edition of the Congressional Record on your iPad (and maybe save a few trees in the process).  Just like the Library of Congress does with THOMAS, we are pulling together data from our  partners: the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Government Printing Office.

In the iTunes App Store, we describe the app as being able to:

  • Browse editions of the Congressional Record by date: January 4, 1995 (the 104th Congress, 1st Session) to the present
  • Perform keyword searches within individual documents or sections within documents
  • Share documents via email
  • Save documents to your preferred iPad PDF reader
  • Identify the latest bills and resolutions considered daily on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives
  • Identify the latest bills, resolutions, treaties, and nominations considered daily on the floor of the U.S. Senate

Want even more details about what the Congressional Record is?  See the About the Congressional Record page in THOMAS.

It has been a lot of fun to watch this project move from the conceptual mockups to a working iPad app.

The image on the left is the splash screen once you click on the app.

The image on the right shows the home screen for the app with the most recent daily issue of the Congressional Record accessible and the House and Senate Floor Today feeds at the bottom (which link to the legislation in THOMAS).  These mockups look very similar to what you can now download.

For those of you without iPads, this content is still available in THOMAS where you can read the Daily Digest or browse the daily issues.  The House Floor Today and Senate Floor Today feeds that display are available via email and RSS.

One of our most popular posts last year was There’s a Congressional App for That.  Time to update it with the new app!

Comments (13)

  1. This is great news, will there be an android version? I am a Kindle user myself :).

    • Since the Congressional Record is in PDF, the experience is best on a tablet. Further enhancements / platforms will depend on factors including available resources.

  2. When will you be releasing an app for Android devices?

  3. When will we see it for Android?

  4. GPO is pleased to partner with the Library of Congress on this project, which gives the public another way to access the Congressional Record. The debates of Congress are also available on GPO’s Federal Digital System, at http://www.fdsys.gov. GPO has been making the Congressional Record available online to Congress and the public since 1994.

  5. need it for iPhone4s please

  6. Yes, the iPhone 4s too please.

  7. Also be sure to check out the Sunlight Foundation’s Capitol Words site that allows for word and phrase frequency searches by state, date and legislator:

    http://capitolwords.org/

  8. An app for the iPhone will not be available anytime soon. LoC representatives have informed Congressional Staff that there are not sufficient funds available to create an app for other platforms (iPhone, Kindle, etc.) Mr. Weber alludes to this above in post # 5.

    In addition, the app was requested by House Leadership and unless Leadership makes the request of the LoC to build apps for additional platforms, they won’t.

  9. merci

  10. Could we PLEASE have an interface for the Congressional Record that is similar to Thomas’? That works 10 billion times better than that new garbage-inspired version on the new Congress site.

    blech, total garbage this new app.

    • Thank you for your feedback, EP. Have you tried using the Congressional Record on Congress.gov? Congress.gov uses responsive design and works on any device. You can also search across issues versus just searching within one on the app.

  11. Is there an Android version yet for The Congressional Record?

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