THOMAS

THOMAS was the first online database of United States Congress legislative information. A project of the Library of Congress, it was launched in January 1995 at the inception of the 104th Congress and retired on July 5, 2016; it has been superseded by Congress.gov.

Contents

The resource was a comprehensive, Internet-accessible source of information on the activities of Congress, including:

The database was named after Thomas Jefferson, who was the third President of the United States. "THOMAS" was an acronym for "The House [of Representatives] Open Multimedia Access System".

In 1999, Al Gore asked Palm Computing for access to Thomas on a Palm VII. Probably the first legislative mobile app, it was released that year by Palm's partner Workspot in Palo Alto.

The website allowed users to share legislative information via several social networking sites, and there were proposals for an application programming interface.

Library of Congress Legislative Data Challenge

The Library of Congress created the Markup of US Legislation in Akoma Ntoso challenge in July 2013 to create representations of selected US bills using the most recent Akoma Ntoso standard within a couple months for a $5,000 prize, and the Legislative XML Data Mapping challenge in September 2013 to produce a data map for US bill XML and UK bill XML to the most recent Akoma Ntoso schema within a couple months for a $10,000 prize.

References

  1. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): THOMAS Retirement". Library of Congress. Retrieved October 18, 2014.
  2. ↑ "thomas.loc.gov". January 22, 1999.
  3. ↑ "thomas.loc.gov". February 2, 2011.
  4. ↑ "THOMAS.gov to Retire July 5". News from the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress. April 28, 2016. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  5. ↑ Vlietstra, J. (2001). Dictionary of Acronyms and Technical Abbreviations: For Information and Communication Technologies and Related Areas. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 624. ISBN 9781852333973.
  6. ↑ "THOMAS Legislative Database". TUCOWS. October 11, 1999.
  7. ↑ Library of Congress goes wireless, March 2, 2000
  8. ↑ Historical Note, retrieved October 3, 2026
  9. ↑ "Where's Tech Support When You Need It?", Wired, December 1, 1999
  10. ↑ "Sharing THOMAS Content with the Share Tool". THOMAS. Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 2010-12-10.
  11. ↑ Zetter, Kim (March 5, 2009). "the database of United States Congress legislative information". Wired.
  12. ↑ "Markup of US Legislation in Akoma Ntoso". Retrieved 2013-09-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  13. ↑ Gheen, Tina (July 16, 2013). "Library of Congress Announces First Legislative Data Challenge". Library of Congress.
  14. ↑ "Legislative XML Data Mapping". Legislative XML Data Mapping.
  15. ↑ Gheen, Tina (September 10, 2013). "Second Library of Congress Legislative Data Challenge Launched". Library of Congress.
  16. ↑ Gheen, Tina (December 19, 2013). "First Legislative Data Challenge Winner Announced". Library of Congress. Retrieved December 20, 2013.
  17. ↑ Gheen, Tina (February 25, 2014). "Jim Mangiafico and Garrett Schure Announced as Winners of the Second Library of Congress Legislative Data Challenge". Library of Congress. Retrieved February 25, 2014.