For example, suppose you're looking for information on digital radio. Using THOMAS, you can retrieve the recent laws and pending House and Senate bills concerning this technology. And you can find a myriad of other types of information issued by government agencies (e.g. policies, specifications, current and future projections for the market, state regulations, contracts) in GovBot.
THOMAS - US LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION COVERED CLEARLY AND COMPLETELY
When using THOMAS, it helps to dust off your high school or college civics - especially the part about how a bill becomes a law. However, you can get by with only the most elementary knowledge about the US government since THOMAS is completely menu-based. THOMAS also provides its own detailed explanation of the legislative process in both the House and the Senate.
Because of its size, scope and detail, it would be impossible to describe all the services THOMAS offers in this space of this article. Instead I'll concentrate on the major areas it covers.
Information contained in THOMAS is divided into three main sections - Legislation, the Congressional Record and Committee Information.
Legislation
You can obtain three basic types of legislative information - the full text of House and Senate bills, summaries of House and Senate bills, and the full text or summaries of committee reports.
Full Text of Legislation: THOMAS contains the full text of Senate and House bills from the 101st through the 106th Congresses (1989-2000). Each Congress must be searched individually. Since the bills are often very long, keyword searches are likely to retrieve many irrelevant results. (i.e., Your subject may be mentioned, but the bill may not really be concerned with it.)
You're more likely to get pertinent results by doing a keyword search for your topic in the Bill Summary and Status area, and then looking at the complete bill.
Bill Summary and Status: This section contains summary and status information about each House and Senate bill, beginning with the 93rd Congress in 1973.
You can search THOMAS' Bill Summary and Status area by keyword, bill/amendment number, stage in the legislative process, date of introduction, sponsor/cosponsor, and committee. Each result contains the number of the bill, a (usually) one-sentence summary of its purpose and its sponsor.
