THOMAS, a service of the Library of Congress, is one of the best free sources of US legislative information available on the Internet. The resources included in THOMAS are grouped under three main headings on the main page: Legislation, Congressional Record, and Committee Information.
The section on legislation provides access to bill summaries and status since 1973, the text of bills since 1989, summaries of major legislation since 1995, public laws since 1973, and roll call votes since 1990. Two of the files in the Legislation section function as online continuations of Major Legislation of Congress and the Digest of Public General Bills and Resolutions, previously produced by the Congressional Research Service in printed format. The bill summary and status pages permit searching by subject terms utilizing a thesaurus called Legislative Indexing Vocabulary, which may help to retrieve more relevant bills than is possible with keyword searching.
The Congressional Record section provides the full text of this title since 1989, and the Congressional Record Index since 1994. Also included in this section is an annual statistical summary of Congressional workloads as well as calendars for the House from 1975 and for the Senate from 1978, showing the days when each chamber was in session.
The section on committee information has links to committee reports, committee home pages and schedules of meetings, and transcripts of committee hearings since 1998 for most committees. The transcripts of committee hearings are the submitted written testimony and do not usually include any subsequent questions and answers.
Small sidebars on the left side of the opening menu provide links to a feature called Bills in the News, as well as Congressional directories and relevant legislative, judicial, and executive branch Web sites, including GPO Access (http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/index. html), which is quite similar to THOMAS. At the bottom of the left sidebar are links to several historical documents, including early Congressional documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution of the United States. There are additional links to substantial historical Congressional publications which are part of the Library of Congress American Memory Project: Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774‐1789; Journal of the House of Representatives, 1789‐1829; Journal of the Senate, 1789‐1829; Annals of Congress, 1789‐1824; Register of Debates, 1824‐1829; and US Statutes at Large, 1789‐present. Additional years of coverage will be added to several of these resources in future releases, which should enhance their value to scholars.
Three tabs on the top banner provide links to information on the House floor this week, the House floor now, and the Senate schedule. Under the top banner are forms for searching for current bills by bill number or keyword, which duplicates the function provided in the section on legislative information. On the lower half of the opening screen there are links to several online resources that don’t fit neatly into other categories, including links to impeachment documents relating to President Clinton and President Andrew Johnson. And, finally, a menu bar at the bottom of the screen links to other online resources provided by the Library of Congress, including the American Memory Project, the Copyright Office, the Global Legal Information Network, and information on current and recent exhibitions at the Library.
The many links on the opening page of THOMAS are well organized, and the use of graphics is minimized so that the page displays quickly. Subdued shades of blue and grey dominate the pages of THOMAS and reinforce the feeling that this site is so strong on content that glitz is not needed. Many of the files can be searched, browsed, and limited in various ways, such as by date, committee, or name. Novice users will appreciate the many help buttons on the search forms which lead to extensive and authoritative help screens and documentation. The complexities of the federal legislative process are clearly explained, and many first‐time visitors to THOMAS will find that it’s worth taking the time to read relevant portions of the documentation.
Advanced searches can be done using THOMAS’ InQuery search engine, which can sometimes be difficult to use, but it permits the use of logical and proximity operators, truncation and wild cards in search terms. Bill text files are updated several times a day when Congress is in session, and the Congressional Record is available for the previous day by mid‐morning. Lengthy bills and other large files are divided into sections to foster quicker loading and display of files. The InQuery search engine displays search results in relevance‐ranked order, but short bills tend to be more highly ranked than long bills. Several of the Web pages of Congressional committees which are linked from THOMAS include audio clips or files in PDF format, and it is necessary to install Real Player and Adobe Acrobat software to utilize these features. Most bills and public laws can be viewed in both text and PDF format so that the viewer can choose between a format which downloads quickly or appears identical to the printed version.
GPO Access provides access to much of the information found in THOMAS, but GPO Access includes a broader range of regulatory information, such as the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations. GPO Access also includes the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents since 1993, the United States Government Manual since 1995, and Public Papers of the Presidents for 1996‐7. GPO Access includes more years of the Congressional Record Index than THOMAS does, but THOMAS includes more years of the Congressional Record and public laws. THOMAS is an excellent source of US legislative information and is highly recommended for linking from appropriate sections of library home pages on the Web. It should be popular with both the general public and academic communities.
