Google is to digitize Congressional Hearings

The Library of Congress (LC) and Google will collaborate on digitizing Congressional Hearings. The LC contains about 75,000 volumes of printed Congressional Hearings. Committees hold hearings for a variety of purposes. Testimony is received from members of congress, officials of the executive branch, policy experts, interest groups and sometimes the general public on legislative proposals, the functioning of government progress, subjects of controversy and matters under investigation. The Law Library’s hearing collection is a rich resource for anyone interested in the history of issues that still face our country today.

As part of the Law Library’s transition to the digital future, a collaborative pilot project was undertaken with Google, Inc. to digitize the entire collection and make it freely available to Congress and the world. Three collections have been selectively compiled to provide users with a test experience: Census: U.S., Freedom of Information and Privacy, Immigration.

This project aims to provide text-readable PDF versions of the Congressional Hearings and to make them available as quickly as possible.