Recently, changes made to Congress.gov have made searching for specific topics much easier. In our most recent “Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top” blog post, Robert Brammer unveiled the Congress.gov Help Center, a feature that makes the Help pages on Congress.gov searchable. To further facilitate the navigation of our resources, you can embed a Congress.gov search box into your very own website!
This feature makes Congress.gov more accessible to users, as it can allow them to conduct a search for Congress.gov resources like bill text, executive nominations, congressional floor debates, and member information, from third-party websites. This tool is especially helpful for librarians and educators, as it will allow them to put a Congress.gov search bar directly into any educational website about Congress, federal laws, or the legislative process. Those writing about federal legislation, embedding the search box can allow their readers to search for—and find the full text of—bills, resolutions, nominations, and other resources on Congress.gov. Here’s an example of how the U.S. Senate utilizes this resource on its website.
If you wish to embed the search box into your website, visit our FAQs page on Congress.gov.
We host orientation webinars regularly to demonstrate how to use the resources available on Congress.gov and explain recent updates and improvements. While the focus of these sessions is on demonstrating how to search legislation and the congressional member information attached to the legislation, the new features of Congress.gov are also highlighted. Please visit our Legal Research Institute page in January 2021 to find our updated webinar schedule, as well as links to webinar registration pages.