THOMAS House Committee Hearing Video Update

The following is a guest post by Megan Lulofs, a Legal Information Analyst in the Public Services Division.

It has been just over one month since THOMAS started linking to live streams of House Committee Hearings. In that month, we have started tweeting hearings as they happen using the #THOMASlive hashtag, and we are interacting with Congress to keep our viewers up to date on the latest hearing happenings. We recently added the beautiful orange icon seen in multiple places below.

Here are some of the things we have learned since our first guide to watching hearings on THOMAS:

• You can see a full listing of House Committee Hearings, including times, and whether the hearing is open or closed, in the Congressional Record Daily Digest on THOMAS, or using the Congressional Record app for iPad.
• Instead of airing live, some committees are filming their hearings and releasing shortly after, like the House Committee on Armed Services. You can see those hearings on the Committee’s THOMAS video page.
• In fact, almost all of the House Committees have archived hearing videos available on their THOMAS video pages. Click on a committee from the list to see what’s available.
• In addition to regular committee hearings, THOMAS is streaming and saving video from joint hearings and special briefing sessions from the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission). These sessions are listed in the Congressional Record Daily Digest under Joint Committee Meetings.
• What happens when subcommittees overlap (which is very common during the 10a.m. hour)? Either the committee will select which hearing to air, or two screens will appear on the committee’s THOMAS video page.

For you modern, web-savvy legal scholars out there, don’t forget that you can do a parallel citation to an Internet resource when citing hearings with Bluebook Rule 13.3 + Rule 18.2.3. To get a permanent link to a Committee Hearing Video, use the Share/Save button as you would throughout THOMAS:

What do you think? How are you using House Committee Hearing video?