Contact: Sheryl Cannady (202) 707-6456
Website: http://beta.congress.gov

January 23, 2013

Library Adds Congressional Record, CBO Cost Estimates to Congress.gov Beta Website

New for the 113th Congress

The Library of Congress today is adding the Congressional Record, published by the Government Printing Office (GPO), and cost-estimate reports from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to its Congress.gov beta website, a public site for accessing free, fact-based legislative information.

The additions will supplement bills, bill summaries, Member profiles and legislative history information already available on the site. Launched in September 2012, Congress.gov features platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation. Congress.gov eventually will replace the public THOMAS system and the congressional Legislative Information System (LIS).

"It’s exciting to see these crucial elements added to Congress.gov to coincide with the start of a new congressional session," said Jim Karamanis, the Library’s head of web services. "By integrating these new features, people can target their searches to find a bill, corresponding floor statements and cost estimates—all from a single search results page. We have had positive feedback from congressional staff, teachers, researchers and other users on this new information tool and we hope these additions make for an even better, more comprehensive user experience."

Congressional Record

The Congressional Record from the 112th Congress will be available, as well as records from the beginning of the 113th Congress and going forward. Congressional Records from previous Congresses going back to 1994 will be added during future updates. The Congressional Record is the official record of House and Senate floor proceedings and includes debates and statements made on the floor of each chamber as well as records of various parliamentary actions and roll-call votes. Like other data on Congress.gov, the metadata and contents of the Congressional Record are searchable through the single search box that enables targeted searching. Among the features:

• A Congressional Record landing page that will default to the most recent available issue of the Record.
• A persistent navigation header that will display details about the currently displayed issue, including a link to a PDF for the full issue.
• Ability to navigate the Record via a date selector or via year/volume and page.
• A web page displaying one issue of the Record, including tabs for each of the sections available for that issue: Daily Digest, House, Senate, Extensions of Remarks.
• A tabbed view of each section of an issue of the Record, listing all articles within that section.
• Detailed viewing of an article, including a link to the PDF for the page(s) containing the article.
• Page view – listing all articles that begin on a particular page.
• Page range view – listing all articles that begin on a specific range of pages

Congressional Budget Office Reports

All bills from 2001 through the present that have a CBO Cost Estimate will now include a "CBO Cost Estimate" link to the right of the Overview section on the legislative detail page. This will open a pop-up that displays a list of associated CBO Cost Estimates, with a link to the CBO page displaying that report.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 155 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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PR 13-013
01/23/13
ISSN 0731-3527

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