Congress.gov Officially Out of Beta

More Features, Enhancements Added

The free legislative information website, Congress.gov, is officially out of beta form, and beginning today includes several new features and enhancements. URLs that include beta.Congress.gov will be redirected to Congress.gov The site now includes the following:

New Feature: Congress.gov Resources

A new resources section providing an A to Z list of hundreds of links related to Congress
An expanded list of “most viewed” bills each day, archived to July 20, 2014

New Feature: House Committee Hearing Videos

Live streams of House Committee hearings and meetings, and an accompanying archive to January, 2012

Improvement: Advanced Search

Support for 30 new fields, including nominations, Congressional Record and name of member

Improvement: Browse

Days in session calendar view
Roll Call votes
Bill by sponsor/co-sponsor

When the Library of Congress, in collaboration with the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and the Government Printing Office (GPO) released Congress.gov as a beta site in the fall of 2012, it included bill status and summary, member profiles and bill text from the two most recent congresses at that time – the 111th and 112th.

Since that time, Congress.gov has expanded with the additions of the Congressional Record, committee reports, direct links from bills to cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, legislative process videos, committee profile pages, nominations, historic access reaching back to the 103rd Congress and user accounts enabling saved personal searches. Users have been invited to provide feedback on the site’s functionality, which has been incorporated along with the data updates.

Plans are in place for ongoing enhancements in the coming year, including addition of treaties, House and Senate Executive Communications and the Congressional Record Index.

The site takes the place of the legacy site THOMAS. Named for Thomas Jefferson, THOMAS was launched by the Library in 1995 as a bipartisan initiative of Congress and averages 10 million visits each year. The system has been updated over the years, but the foundation can no longer support the capabilities that today’s Internet users have come to expect, including access on mobile devices.

Congress.gov is the official source for federal legislative information. A collaboration among the Library of Congress, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Government Printing Office, Congress.gov is a free resource that provides searchable access to bill status and summary, bill text, member profiles, the Congressional Record, committee reports, direct links from bills to cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, legislative process videos, committee profile pages and historic access reaching back to the 103rd Congress.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.

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