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Posted by: Andrew Weber
Moving from a 20-year-old system to our new, modern Congress.gov platform has many advantages. One of these is that, starting today, email alerts are available on Congress.gov. There are three different types of alerts in this initial release: Member of Congress, legislation, and the Congressional Record. Bill and member alerts were an often-requested feature on …
Posted by: Andrew Weber
Even though we are working to retire THOMAS, I thought we should celebrate the fact that it has now been online for twenty years! THOMAS was a pioneer when it was launched on January 5, 1995. It was even noteworthy that THOMAS was “available 24 hours a day.” I have been at the Library of …
Posted in: Congress, Law Library, THOMAS
Posted by: Andrew Weber
I love end of the year lists. It is nice to take a step back from the day to day or month to month and look at trends over time. Last year I surveyed the top 13 in 2013 and decided to add another item to the list this year. This has been an eventful …
Posted by: Andrew Weber
The Library of Congress launched Congress.gov in beta two years ago. Today, I’m happy to announce we officially removed the beta label. That’s roughly three years quicker than Gmail took to remove its beta label, but we won’t give you the option of putting it back on Congress.gov. URLs that include beta.Congress.gov will be redirected …
Posted by: Andrew Weber
The following is a guest post by Noriko Ohtaki, who was a research fellow at the Law Library of Congress. She previously blogged about Searching for Current Japanese Laws and Regulations. G8 leaders signed the Open Data Charter on June 18, 2013. Open Data is intended to make information resources accessible, discoverable, and usable electronically to the public, increase …
Posted by: Andrew Weber
This year seems to be flying by. Our team of bloggers has posted over 100 times to In Custodia Legis so far this year. Of those 100 posts, two of the top ten most viewed have to do with time. There is also significant interest in tracing legislation and Congress.gov. Advanced Search, Browse, and Appropriations …
Posted in: Congress, Law Library, THOMAS
Posted by: Andrew Weber
I have been looking forward to this Congress.gov release for several months. There is now nomination information, accounts, the ability to save searches, an expanded About section, an FAQ section, easy access to Member remarks in the Congressional Record, and more. With the new updates, you can locate nominations dating back to 1981. The nominations section …
Posted by: Andrew Weber
The hard work put in by the great Congress.gov team continues to pay off. The Webby Awards, which honor the best of the web, included Congress.gov as an honoree in the best practices for the web category. Voting is going on now for the five finalists in the Best Practices category: NPR Responsive Design Project, PBS Video, Flash …
Posted by: Andrew Weber
I was at a Congress.gov meeting earlier this week where Jill MacNeice presented the results from a round of unmoderated Congress.gov testing. During the presentation Jill showed this wall with responses to questions posed that included a heat map of where people clicked on Congress.gov. Based on hundreds of responses received, Jill was able to draw …
Posted in: Congress, Pic of the Week, THOMAS