November/December 2007 issue
Congressional Hearings to be
Digitized
The Law Library of Congress
contains approximately 75,000
volumes of printed
Congressional Hearings. Congressional
committees hold hearings for a variety of
reasons: to determine whether legislation is
needed to address a particular issue, to
investigate a matter, to receive feedback on a bill,
or simply to gather information.
When published, hearings contain transcripts of
testimony along with any written testimony that
was submitted, plus any exhibits that might have
been part of the proceeding. As a result the
Library’s hearing collection is an important
resource for anyone interested in obtaining a
historical perspective on the development of
various laws.
In order to preserve these hearings and make
them more accessible, the Law Library of
Congress has teamed with Google to digitize the
collection into searchable Adobe Acrobat PDF
files. Best of all - this online collection will be
free and available to the public!
Three test collections have been compiled to
provide users with an idea of how the collection
will look and function:
Census: U.S.
Freedom of Information/Privacy
Immigration
Ultimately, both the Library and Google will
provide full-text access to the entire collection. Read the full announcement here.