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Fall 2018 Information Update From Washington, DC

I got back to DC in time for the 2018 Federal Depository Library Conference, held October 22 through 23 in Arlington, Virginia. This was an opportunity to learn about the latest enhancements to the Government Publishing Office’s U.S. government information platform, govinfo.gov . This platform has replaced their FDSys.gov which will be offline by the end of this year. There will be redirects from the PURL’s to the new location of the content.

Their new content includes statute compilations for major legislation, eight new courts added in the U.S. Courts collection, and the Congressional Directories for the 115th Congress. They have also added finding aids such as landing pages for the Senate Journal and the Native American and American Indian related publications. There is also a robust help section including tutorials and handouts. And there is a Developer Hub for those who want to link to or download parts of their data. Please check out this new platform which is easy to navigate and search.

The Law Library of Congress continues to enhance their Congress.gov site. They announce these new features in their In Custodia Legis blog. Recent updates were in July, including this tip: “Sign up to receive the Congress.gov Notifications news feed and get alerts about new features, advanced notice of system maintenance and downtime, and more. To subscribe, visit the Congress.gov RSS and Email Alerts page, and select either the Congress.gov Notifications RSS or email delivery option.”

There were two updates in August, on the sixth and the twenty seventh. New enhancements in September included enhanced saved search email alerts and an experimental Chrome browser extension. The October post included a search tip on how to filter search results with policy terms and a mention of the CRS reports now on Congress.gov. Then on October 29 they announced a new calendar for Senate and House of Representatives committee hearings and markups, which will include links.

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