New Browse, Updated Bill Alerts, and More: Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top for July 2021

Earlier this month, Margaret shared the exciting news that we added bills and resolutions from 1799-1873 to Congress.gov. There was also a press release to highlight this new feature of content from Century of Lawmaking.

We previously added Key Word in Context (KWIC) to Legislative Text on the Quick Search Form. With today’s release we have added it to the Congressional Record on the same form. One thing that is great about this is you can also see where your search term in context as it shows up in the PDFs of the Bound Congressional Record. We also continue to keep adding to the Bound Congressional Record collection and now go back to the 69th Congress (1925-1927).

As we have been working on adding the Bound Congressional Record and the Statutes at Large to Congress.gov, we have also been updating the Browse page for both items. The Statutory Citation has been added to the Public Law Browse.

We added a link to the Daily Digest tab for the Bound Congressional Record Browse.

We have also worked on enhancing our bill alerts in a couple ways. When setting up a bill alert, you will be able to select options that indicate what type of bill alerts you would like to receive. In addition to selecting from the previous alert items of actions, text, summaries and cosponsors, you can also choose to receive alerts on related bills, amendments, committees, titles, subjects, and CBO cost estimates. When you receive your new alerts, there will be more details in the email. For example, the new alert will include the new number of cospsonsors or the new action (rather than just say that there are new cosponsors or a new action as before).

And one final item is the ability to do a title search for items from the Committee Schedule such as title:”Library of Congress”.

Enhancements

The second set of Congress.gov enhancements for July include the following.

Enhancement – Congressional Record – Keyword In Context

• Congressional Record search results display two snippets from the text of each search result, showing the search terms in context.
• Use the Show Keywords In Context checkbox to hide or display the text snippets in your search results.

Enhancement – Bill Alerts – Choose which changes to track

• You can choose which changes to track when setting up an alert for an individual bill or resolution.
• After logging in, go to your Alerts management page and use the Edit Alert link to update your track changes preferences.
• Options for tracking changes include cosponsors, actions, related bills, amendments, committees, titles, summaries, subjects, CBO cost estimates and bill, resolution or law text.

Enhancement – Congressional Record – Bound Edition

• The Congressional Record Bound edition is now available for the 69th and 70th Congresses (1925-1929).

Congress.gov Tip

Last year we held a Congress.gov Virtual Public Forum in September. We plan to host another one on September 2 at 1:00 PM Eastern that you can register for.

Most-Viewed Bills

Below are the most-viewed bills for the week of July 18, 2021.