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Archive for the Congress Category (188 posts)

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top for July 2018

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We just passed the two year anniversary of when THOMAS was retired to make way for Congress.gov.  Robert recently shared our second set of enhancements that we had for Congress.gov in June. One area where we have focused is on enhancing committee data.  With this release we are adding a legislative interest column to the House: Legislation with Actions Related to Committees browse page and the ability to search on legislative interest from the Committees section of the Advanced Search page.

Browse list for House: Legislation with Actions Related to Committees with Legislative Interest

New Enhancements for July 2018

Here are the Congress.gov Enhancements for this release:

Enhancement – Legislation Advanced Search Form – “Legislative Interest” House Committee Activity

  • Legislative Interest, a House committee-related activity, may now be searched from the Legislation Advanced Search form.
  • To search, select the Legislative Interest checkbox from the Committees section of the form either on its own or in combination with other committee-related activity options: Any, Referred to, Hearings by, Markup by, Reported by, Reported Original Measure, or Discharged from.
  • Limit the search to one or multiple committees using the Choose House Committees or Choose Senate Committees buttons below the checkboxes.
  • Example – From the Legislation Advanced Search form, a user may retrieve 115th Congress legislation of Legislative Interest to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Enhancement – Legislation with Actions Related to House Committees Browse – “Legislative Interest” Column

  • The Legislation with Actions Related to House Committees browse report now has a column for Legislative Interest
  • Columns in the report – All Legislation, Originated, Referred, Hearings, Markups, Reported, Discharged, and Legislative Interest – each contain data for legislation on which a committee has acted. Committees only display in the report after their legislative activities have been received from the official House legislative data system. Numbers in each column link to results lists for the specified committee-related activity.
  • Example – The 113th Congress report displays 20 items of Legislative Interest to the House Homeland Security committee. Selecting the link in the Legislative Interest column displays the 20 bills in a results list.

Search Tip

Adrienne‘s tip this week is on the new Congress.gov Notifications alert:

Sign up to receive the Congress.gov Notifications news feed and get alerts about new features, advanced notice of system maintenance and downtime, and more.

To subscribe, visit the Congress.gov RSS and Email Alerts page, and select either the Congress.gov Notifications RSS or email delivery option.

Sign up for the new Congress.gov Notifications RSS or email alert.

Top 10

What legislation are people looking at this summer?  Here are the Most-Viewed Bills for the week of July 8, 2018.  All are from the current congress.

1. H.R.4760 Securing America’s Future Act of 2018
2. H.R.5428 Stand with UK against Russia Violations Act
3. H.R.5515 John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019
4. H.R.2 Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018
5. H.R.1 An Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018.
6. H.R.299 Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2017
7. H.R.6136 Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018
8. S.2155 Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act
9. H.R.38 Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017
10. H.J.Res.69 Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule of the Department of the Interior relating to “Non-Subsistence Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska”.

Please let us know what you think of Congress.gov in the comments below or submit feedback.

Sign Up Now for the Congress.gov Webinar

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This is a guest post by Ashley Granby Wolf, an intern in the Office of External Relations of the Law Library of Congress. Join us on July 26, 2018 for our live and free Congress.gov webinar hosted by the Law Library of Congress!  Our legal reference experts, Barbara Bavis and Robert Brammer , will demonstrate […]

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top for June 2018, Part 2

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Earlier this month, Andrew provided an update on the Congress.gov enhancements, including that the date of the “Previous Meeting” on the homepage is now linked to a list of items that were on the House or Senate floor that day. The previous release also included errata, a published correction for a committee report that, if […]

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top for June 2018

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Back in May, Robert provided an update on the Congress.gov enhancements including “the ability to browse legislation using subject terms on ‘all information’ bill detail pages.” One of the new features in the Congress.gov enhancements released today is that the date of the “Previous Meeting” on the homepage will now be linked to a list of […]

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top for May 2018

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Andrew shared the news about our second release in April, which included enhancements such as the ability to edit your saved search and adding an afternoon alert. In this release, we have enhanced the ability to browse legislation using subject terms on “all information” bill detail pages, added the option to overwrite or update saved searches, and […]

Discover New Ways to Search Congress.gov

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The following is a guest post by Tina Gheen, the project manager for Congress.gov in the Office of the Chief Information Officer of the Library of Congress. Tina was formerly an emerging technologies librarian with the Law Library of Congress. You may have noticed changes to the Congress.gov homepage in one of our recent updates. We streamlined the site […]

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top for April 2018

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Today, we’re bringing you the latest Congress.gov updates just in time for the arrival of spring.  Last month, Andrew brought you the latest updates to saved search alert functionality.  For the April release, we have improved the sorting of search results, so that items in the current Congress now appear at the top when sorting by relevancy. Our work on committee […]

Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top for March 2018

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It seems like just yesterday that Robert was sharing the Congress.gov updates for February, which included doubling the downloads of search results from 500 to 1,000 items. New Enhancements for March 2018 One item we are working on is how to improve our Congress.gov alerts and saved searches.  In this release we take a step forward by […]