WASHINGTON – Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) joined Jon S. Corzine (D-NJ) and four other Senators today calling on the Library of Congress to provide better public access to congressional information via the Internet. Currently, members of the public wishing to get official legislative information on the World Wide Web must use a public website called THOMAS, which has a small fraction of the features available on an internal website used by Members of Congress and their staffs. In a letter to the Librarian of Congress, the Senators complained about the inadequacy of the public website:
“In our view, the current form of THOMAS is insufficient as a portal to the Congress of the United States.” Users of THOMAS are unable to search across multiple congresses, find all the bills introduced by an individual congressman with a single click, easily find pending amendments to a bill, request email alerts when action occurs on a bill, or quickly see the previous day’s legislative activity. All these features are available to congressional users of the Legislative Information System (LIS), the internal website also maintained by the Library of Congress. The Senators urge the Library of Congress to “upgrade the THOMAS website in order to make available to the public the… services that are available on the LIS website.” The letter was also signed by Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Russell D. Feingold (D-WI). A copy of the letter urging improvements in the THOMAS website is below: The Honorable James H. Billington Librarian of Congress 101 Independence Ave., S.E. Washington, D.C. 20540 Dear Dr. Billington: We are writing to request that the Library of Congress take steps to improve the THOMAS website in order to make information about Congress more accessible to the general public. As you know, Members of Congress and their staffs have access to the Legislative Information System (LIS), a website that is superior to THOMAS in many ways. For example, LIS provides users with advanced search capabilities, whereas THOMAS is a “bare-bones” site with limited searching tools. Unlike users of LIS, THOMAS users are unable to search across multiple Congresses, click on the sponsor of a particular bill to find other bills sponsored by that Member, search by state delegation, specify the difference between a full text search and a summary text search, or access pending and proposed amendments. In addition, THOMAS does not allow users to save searches, request e-mail alerts, or access the legislative action taken on the previous day. In our view, the current form of THOMAS is insufficient as a portal to the Congress of the United States. We recognize that the LIS website includes links to proprietary services that cannot be made available to the public. However, we believe that most of the other non-proprietary links should be included on a publicly available website. Therefore, we urge you to upgrade the THOMAS website in order to make available to the public the non-proprietary services that are available on the LIS website. We hope you would agree about the importance of an informed public in our democracy, and about the value of making legislative information as easily accessible to the public as possible. Again, we urge you to take prompt action to improve the interface and functionality of THOMAS, and look forward to hearing from you on this matter. Thank you for your attention to this request. Sincerely, JON S. CORZINE JOE LIEBERMAN JOHN MCCAIN PATRICK J. LEAHY JOHN CORNYN RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD