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March 04, 2006

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Available Online

The GPO now has the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/cdocuments/hd108-222/. According to an , it's the first update since 1989 and the first time it's been available online. Unfortunately, while the information is pretty fascinating, the interface leaves a lot to be desired.

This isn't a search engine or database or anything like that. Instead, it's a PDF'd document that runs well over 2000 pages. Thankfully those pages are divided up into sections including Biographies, Congress, and Continental Congress. The biographies section is alphabetized; just for giggles I downloaded UDALL to UTTERBACK, one of the smaller sections at only 92K (some of these things weigh in at over 1MB.)

The biographies were text only; no images of the biography'd were included. Information included birth date and location, educational and professional endeavors, government services, and death dates (when appropriate; the biography also includes living people.) Some of the biographies were a bit sketchy, and though some of them were more extensive and even had bibliographical references, none of them I saw were more than a few hundred words long.

Annoying that the information is available in this kind of format; it's difficult to search. On the other hand the PDFs were very well done and the documents are a pleasure to read.

Posted to Government-US | TrackBack


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