This is good news. Today GPO announced the first release of digitized volumes of the Congressional Record, part of a collaborative project between GPO and the Library of Congress. The plan is to go back to volume 1, 1873. So stay tuned for additional releases.
The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) partners with the Library of Congress (LC) to release the digital bound Congressional Records from 1991-1998 on GPO’s govinfo. This release covers debates of the 102nd through the 105th Congresses.
This era of Congress covers historical topics such as:
The Persian Gulf War
Bill Clinton’s Presidency
NAFTA
Enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act
Republicans gaining control of both the House and Senate since 1954
GPO and LC will continue to collaborate on this important project and release digital versions of the bound Congressional Record back to the first one published by GPO on March 5, 1873. GPO publishes the Congressional Record in print and digitally on govinfo every day Congress is in session.
via GPO & Library of Congress Begin Digital Release of All Congressional Records.
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Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, this is great what they’re doing, but I wonder if there are any plans to include issues of the “Congressional Globe” in the collection. It’s not a government publication, of course, but it did fulfill the same function as the Congressional Record prior to 1873. I think it would make sense to offer that too.
I was thinking the same thing Erik. There are actually 3 predecessors to the Congressional Record: Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789–1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824–1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833–1873). Those are available from LC’s American Memory project. But it’d be great if they were all indexed and ingested into FDsys/Govinfo as a single collection. I’ve also asked GPO if the CR will a) be available in bulk; and b) if they’ll be making newer digital bound CR available (digital on FDsys is up to 2001, but print bound CR is up to 2011 at this date).