The Congressional Record page of Congress.gov provides two search capabilities for the Congressional Record. The following are requests to fix an apparently broken lookup capability, improve a current lookup capability, and add a third lookup capability.
Specifically:
The Congressional Record lookup by year and page does not appear to function.
A Congressional Record lookup by date does not operate entirely as a user would expect and may need an improved UX.
It would be useful to have a third lookup capability-- Volume, Part, and Page.
"In my remarks on February 11, 1963 -- Congressional Record, pages 2193-2199 -- I included...."
1. One way a user can find a page in the congressional record is to input the year and page number. This appears to either not work, or not work in all instances as would be expected.
This is the user interface.
Trying to use it can be a frustrating experience. The following are 5 efforts to make it work.
(i) If you type in the year and page number, you get an error message.
A user can try to guess which prefix to use.
(ii) D for digest...
This does not work.
(iii) A user could try H for House.
I would have expected this to work. It does not. I do not know why.
(iv) A user could try S for Senate.
This does not work.
(v) A user could try E for extension.
This also does not work.
None of the five available options appear to work. It is not obvious to me why it does not or how to fix it. This appears to be broken. Perhaps there's a difference between the daily version and the bound version? I cannot figure it out.
2. A user can input the date of the congressional record they wish to see. This functions, but has an unexpected UX.
Please note there is no obvious button to press to "search." Typing in the information alone does not appear to work. To trigger the search, a user would need to press enter. Or, a user can open the calendar and click on the day.
If they do so, they end up the following page.
The result is slightly confusing. The user would have to know to either download the "entire day PDF" or to click on the House tab (as this relates to an item in the House). Trying to search the PDF displayed on the screen would not help find the proper page.
Let's click on the House tab.
This gets you much closer to the result a user would expect. Clicking on the PDF link opens or downloads the file.
But before you click on the link, it also provides a different way of describing the information: "Vol.109, Part 10 - House pages 12679 - 12756".
The additional way finding -- by volume and part -- will become important later.
3. A user should be able to enter the year, volume, and part. It is not apparent where they can do so. This is a feature request.
The Congressional Record page of Congress.gov provides two search capabilities for the Congressional Record. The following are requests to fix an apparently broken lookup capability, improve a current lookup capability, and add a third lookup capability.
Specifically:
For purposes of discussion, please use the following citation from the July 16, 1963 Congressional Record on page 12750.
In case that is not visible:
1. One way a user can find a page in the congressional record is to input the year and page number. This appears to either not work, or not work in all instances as would be expected.
This is the user interface.
Trying to use it can be a frustrating experience. The following are 5 efforts to make it work.
(i) If you type in the year and page number, you get an error message.
A user can try to guess which prefix to use.
(ii) D for digest...
This does not work.
(iii) A user could try H for House.
I would have expected this to work. It does not. I do not know why.
(iv) A user could try S for Senate.
This does not work.
(v) A user could try E for extension.
This also does not work.
None of the five available options appear to work. It is not obvious to me why it does not or how to fix it. This appears to be broken. Perhaps there's a difference between the daily version and the bound version? I cannot figure it out.
2. A user can input the date of the congressional record they wish to see. This functions, but has an unexpected UX.
Please note there is no obvious button to press to "search." Typing in the information alone does not appear to work. To trigger the search, a user would need to press enter. Or, a user can open the calendar and click on the day.
If they do so, they end up the following page.
The result is slightly confusing. The user would have to know to either download the "entire day PDF" or to click on the House tab (as this relates to an item in the House). Trying to search the PDF displayed on the screen would not help find the proper page.
Let's click on the House tab.
This gets you much closer to the result a user would expect. Clicking on the PDF link opens or downloads the file.
But before you click on the link, it also provides a different way of describing the information: "Vol.109, Part 10 - House pages 12679 - 12756".
The additional way finding -- by volume and part -- will become important later.
3. A user should be able to enter the year, volume, and part. It is not apparent where they can do so. This is a feature request.
Some citations in the Congressional Record use an alternative format. See, for example, the Congressional Record on January 23, 1967, page 1138.
Please note the citation format used by Rep. Reuss --
And again, see page 1139 --
It would be helpful for a user to be able to enter the volume, part, and page number and have it return a page or section in the Congressional Record.
This information is tracked by the website/database in some fashion, as we saw above.
It would be helpful if this were an explicit lookup option.
Thank you.