Last year I reviewed the Clinton Administration's Internet presence 
(April 1994 _DATABASE_). Now it is time to take a closer look at another 
branch of the U.S. government--the legislative branch. Some members of 
Congress, both the House and the Senate, have e-mail addresses. Some 
have their own gopher or Web space, and campaigns are discovering the 
communication potential of the Net. However, law-making is the primary 
business of Congress, and it is the availability of federal legislation and 
bill tracking systems that makes the Congressional resources such a 
substantial network resource.

MAJOR SITES
     Various segments of the government have created Internet access 
points to Congressional information. The three major sites for legislative 
information are the House of Rep-resentatives, the Library of Congress 
and the Government Printing Office. 
     The House Web server (http://www.house.gov) was brought online in 
early 1995. Many of the options point back to the older (in Net terms) 
House gopher (gopher://gopher.house.gov). Both the gopher and the Web 
offer similar resources: maps for visitors, information about the internal 
workings of the House, educational resources and more. On both, the 
legislative information is easily available and not buried deep in the menu 
or hypertext structure. Both the Web and gopher present an interface for 
searching each of the two principal legislative House WAIS server 
databases: the full text of House bills and the bill status system for House 
and Senate bills. 
     The Senate also has a gopher, at gopher.senate.gov, and by the time this 
column is published, the Web server at http://www.senate.gov may be up 
and running on a regular basis. However, while the Senate offers 
information space for individual senators and their documents, it does not 
offer the level of information about legislation available elsewhere.
     The Library of Congress offers a number of different databases of 
legislative information. The "Federal Legislation" menu option in the LC 
Information System (telnet://locis.loc.gov) includes both descriptions and 
status of legislation. The available databases go much farther back than 
any of the other Net resources, to 1973. However, the only full text 
available on LOCIS is for a very few, selected bills that have been passed 
into law. A newer WWW offering from the Library of Congress is "THOMAS: 
Legislative Information on the Internet" at http://thomas.loc.gov. In early 
development stages, THOMAS already provides the full text of bills from 
both chambers. The full text of the legislation is accessible by keyword 
and bill number. THOMAS does not have any bill status system and the link 
to the _Congressional Record_ is not yet functional, but other additions 
are being planned. According to the THOMAS Home Page, "Future 
enhancements to THOMAS will include adding the Library's Bill Digest 
files, summaries and chronologies of legislation, and will integrate them 
with the full text of bills."
     The Government Printing Office (GPO) is the official source for the full 
text of legislation. The House gopher and WWW obtain their electronic 
copies of the bills from the GPO. Therefore, it is not surprising that the 
GPO also is a source for legislation. Through the GPO Access program, 
which uses WAIS for indexing and access, the GPO offers a number of 
legislative databases, including the full text of bills from the 103rd and 
the 104th Congress, the Congressional Record full text for 1994 and 1995, 
and the History of Bills for the 103rd and the 104th Congress.
     GPO Access is both a commercial and a free program. Different prices 
are available, depending on which databases are chosen, starting at 
$35/month for a single user of the bills databases. GPO Access is also 
available for free at some depository libraries, and a few of those offer 
open Internet access. The easiest of these to reach are Louisiana State 
University and Georgia Southern University. Telnet to indigo.lib.lsu.edu and 
log in as gpo; or telnet to gsvms2.cc.gasou.edu, log in as info and choose 
GPO Access from the menu. Other depository libraries are considering the 
possibility of offering the same service, and most of these use Simple 
WAIS (swais) as seen in Figure 1. For a complete list of GPO Access sites, 
use gopher to connect to marvel.loc.gov, and then follow these menus: 

Government Information/
Federal Information Resources/
Information By Branch of Federal Government/
General Information Resources/
Government Printing Office (GPO)/
GPO Access (through Depository Library Sites)/

     This listing can also be found by WWW at a rather lengthy URL, but it 
does not work as well. The gopher-to-URL transformation gets confused 
and the list of sites must to be deduced from the badly formed URLs.

FULL TEXT FOR BILLS
     One prominent feature of the many Internet resources for legislative 
information is the full text, ASCII versions of introduced legislation. Both 
THOMAS and the House gopher have full text for bills from the 104th 
Congress. However, the House servers only include the full text for House 
bills and resolutions. THOMAS includes the bills and resolutions from the 
Senate, and it also includes bills from the 103rd Congress. GPO Access 
includes bills from both chambers from both the 104th and the 103rd 
sessions. 
     Which of the three is the most up-to-date? In timeliness, both the 
House servers and THOMAS lag behind GPO Access. During the time that I 
compared the different services, GPO Access was two days more current 
than either of the other sources. In addition, H.R. 723 was available on GPO 
Access while it was missing from THOMAS and the House gopher even 
weeks after the bill was introduced. 
     Yet for ease of use, there is no clear winner. On both the House gopher 
and Web home page, the full-text bill option presents a single prompt for 
search terms. Boolean searching is available, as it is on GPO Access, but 
the Boolean operators must be in uppercase. The only operators are AND, 
OR, NOT and ADJ. If the operator is accidentally entered as lowercase, the 
operator is ignored as a stopword and the default operator, which is an OR, 
is used. On the House sites and on GPO Access, the WAIS search engine's 
default limit is 40 hits, and the results are ranked in order based on the 
WAIS algorithms.
     THOMAS uses a slightly different search engine developed by INQUERY 
but the results are still very similar to WAIS. The Web form (Figure 2) 
presents a more intuitive front end than the single-line WAIS query. The 
first form is used for keyword searching, with a pull-down menu option 
for choosing between the 103rd and the 104th Congress. Radio buttons are 
available for choosing all bills, just those for which there has been floor 
action, or only enrolled bills. Unfor-tunately, keyword searching is limited 
to the Boolean OR, which is the de-fault. THOMAS also limits retrieval to 
the first 100 hits. The THOMAS help files acknowledge the non-Boolean 
limitations and the lack of a controlled vocabulary. Boolean capabilities 
are being planned, and the help file suggests using the Federal Legislation 
option within LOCIS for controlled vocabulary searching.
     The standard Boolean capabilities of the LOCIS database are a welcome 
relief from the strange ways of WAIS. Combined with the Library's 
indexing of bills, LOCIS presents a more traditional option for searching 
for legislation. Unfortunately, LOCIS does not contain the full-text 
versions of the vast majority of bills. So, LC suggests that you search 
LOCIS for specific bills and then, once you have the bill numbers, go back 
to THOMAS to retrieve the full text.
     THOMAS is the best option for finding a specific bill number. The House 
gopher and GPO Access can also pull up a specific bill, but the rather 
unwieldy adjacency operator must be used. For example, to retrieve H.R. 
789, the WAIS needs to see a search such as h ADJ r ADJ 789. THOMAS 
uses a form for searching by bill number, and the search statement is 
much more intuitive. The same search on THOMAS is hr 789 and retrieves 
all versions of the bill, including amendments. GPO Access also gives the 
various versions of bills but they are labeled only with codes. Thus, a bill 
that has been considered and passed by the Senate is labeled with (cps) on 
GPO Access, while on THOMAS the bill is marked as "Considered and passed 
by the Senate." 
     THOMAS is also the only option for browsing through bills by bill 
number. Under the "list of bills by type" option, users first choose from 
the following list:

House Bills
House Concurrent Resolutions
House Joint Resolutions
House Resolutions
Senate Bills
Senate Concurrent Resolutions
Senate Resolutions
Senate Joint Resolutions

     After you choose the kind of bill or resolution, THOMAS presents the 
requested legislation in straight numeric order. This section could be even 
more useful if it provided an easy way to jump to the higher numbers. 
Instead, THOMAS presents 100 bill titles at a time and the only navigation 
button is for moving on to the next 100 titles.
     One nongovernmental Web site that shows some potential for a more 
elegant interface to the various bill search engines goes by the name of 
Will T. Bill (http://www.unipress.com/will-t-bill.html). Will T. Bill is 
simply a World-Wide Web forms interface to the House WAIS server. It 
provides a fill-in-the-blank front end, with options for bill number, title, 
date, sponsor and key 
phrases. 

TRACKING LEGISLATION
     To follow a bill from its introduction to its possible passage into law, 
the House Web site (and gopher) is the most current and comprehensive 
source for legislation tracking. THOMAS has no bill status system (yet). 
The databases on GPO Access include a History of Bills derived from the 
_Congressional Record Index_ but it is not very current. The Federal 
Legislation database on LOCIS covers some chronology of legislation, but 
it is neither as current nor as comprehensive as the House database. LOCIS 
includes floor, committee and subcommittee actions. While it is worth 
checking as a backup source, the House WAIS database for bill status 
should be the first choice.
     The House's bill status database includes information about legislation 
from both houses, while the full-text House database only includes House 
bills. While it is understandable that the House would leave it up to the 
Senate to load their own bills, it presents unnecessary difficulties for the 
user. The bill status database solves that problem and simply includes the 
status of legislation irregardless of origin. There is even a separate 
database for the most recent legislative day's bill status, making this a 
very current source.
     As with the full-text bills WAIS database, Boolean search queries 
require operators in uppercase. In addition to actions on a bill, the House 
database includes references to the _Congressional Record_, report 
numbers, amendments and related legislation. Figure 3 shows a brief 
example of a status report for a piece of legislation that has been passed 
and signed into law. 

WHERE TO TURN FIRST
     In a few short years, the amount of Internet-accessible information 
about the current legislative process in Washington has grown 
significantly. Washington watchers on the Net can now easily browse the 
full text of bills and follow their progression through the legislative 
process. All of the services discussed are, like practically everything on 
the Internet, still under development, and each will likely see significant 
improvements in the next few years. In the meantime, choosing the first 
database to search depends on the specific need. LOCIS provides Boolean 
searching and controlled vocabulary indexing of legislation. THOMAS 
offers easy access by bill number and the full text of House and Senate 
bills. But GPO Access presents the most up-to-date source for full-text 
bills. And for bill status, the House home page (or gopher) is the best 
choice. 

SIDEBAR: Featured Sites

U.S. House of Representatives Home Page
http://www.house.gov

U.S. House of Representatives Gopher
gopher://gopher.house.gov

Library of Congress Information System (LOCIS)
telnet or tn3270 to locis.loc.gov, then choose "Federal Legislation" 

THOMAS
http://thomas.loc.gov

GPO Access at Georgia Southern University
telnet://info@gsvms2.cc.gasou.edu

GPO Access at Louisiana State University
telnet://gpo@indigo.lib.lsu.edu

Will T. Bill
http://www.unipress.com/will-t-bill.html 

Communications to the author should be addressed to Greg R. Notess, Montana State University Libraries, Bozeman, MT 59717-0332; 406/994-6563; Internet--greg@notess.com ; http://www.notess.com..

Copyright © 1995, Online Inc. All rights reserved.