THOMAS

This article is about the U.S. legislative database. For other uses, see 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it was launched in January 1995 at the inception of the 104th Congress and retired on July 5, 2016; it has been superseded by Congress.gov.[1]

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.[2] "THOMAS" was an acronym for "The House [of Representatives] Open Multimedia Access System".[3]

The website allowed users to share legislative information via several social networking sites,[4] and there were proposals for an application programming interface.[5]

Library of Congress Legislative Data Challenge

The Library of Congress created the Markup of US Legislation in Akoma Ntoso challenge[6] 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,[7] and the Legislative XML Data Mapping challenge in September 2013[8] 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.[9]

  • In December 2013, the Library of Congress announced "Jim Mangiafico as the winner of our first legislative data challenge, Markup of US Legislation in Akoma Ntoso and the $5,000 prize".[10]
  • In February 2014, Jim Mangiafico and Garrett Schure as the winners of the Library of Congress Second Legislative Data Challenge.[11]

References

  1. ^ "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): THOMAS Retirement". Library of Congress. Retrieved October 18, 2014.
  2. ^ "THOMAS.gov to Retire July 5". News from the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress. April 28, 2016. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ "Sharing THOMAS Content with the Share Tool". THOMAS. Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 2010-12-10.
  5. ^ Zetter, Kim (March 5, 2009). "the database of United States Congress legislative information". Wired.
  6. ^ "Markup of US Legislation in Akoma Ntoso". Archived from the original on 2013-08-25. Retrieved 2013-09-23.
  7. ^ Gheen, Tina (July 16, 2013). "Library of Congress Announces First Legislative Data Challenge". Library of Congress.
  8. ^ "Legislative XML Data Mapping". Legislative XML Data Mapping.
  9. ^ Gheen, Tina (September 10, 2013). "Second Library of Congress Legislative Data Challenge Launched". Library of Congress.
  10. ^ Gheen, Tina (December 19, 2013). "First Legislative Data Challenge Winner Announced". Library of Congress. Retrieved December 20, 2013.
  11. ^ 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.


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