Biography

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Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

Government Printing Office. (2007). Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present [Electronic]. Retrieved from http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp

PURPOSE

This database is the electronic and more updated version of the printed form of Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, last published in 2005 (Congressional Documents, 2006). Its purpose is to provide the most accurate information about current and past members of Congress, in an organized fashion. It has been produced for anyone who wishes to locate brief biographical summaries of anyone who served in Congress from 1774 to the present.

AUTHORITY

It took a little bit of digging to verify the credibility of this database. It is not marked with a date (other than 1774-present) and no authoring body is credited on the main portal or on any of the pages. However, after looking at the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives’ website (Office of the Clerk), I discovered that the database is an office database from the GPO. The work is also current. I verified this by searching the database for a new representative (Nancy Boyda) for the 110th (current) session of Congress.

SCOPE

The limits of the work are that it only includes brief biographies of Representatives and Senators and also references to where any research collections of the particular legislator are located and also a bibliography of published works by the legislator. Anyone who can use a database search tool can utilize this database, so it can be used by any age group.

FORMAT

For college students studying government and political science, which is my target audience, this resource will be very easy for them to use. Its multiple search criteria allow users to search the database in many ways. Users can search by last name, first name, position, state, party, or year/congress number. There are no instruction or help guides for the database but it’s basically self-explanatory in its use with the various search boxes.

ARRANGEMENT

The search results are alphabetical by last name. There is no option in the search results to resort the search results by year or state or party or Congress number. These options would give the database even greater strength.

ENTRIES

Each entry includes years of birth and death (if applicable), years of service, party affiliation, spouse, and brief biographical information with important dates. A brief bibliography is included at the end of the entry and on the left side of the page are links to applicable research collections (if any) of the legislator’s papers and an extended bibliography of works by and about the legislator (if any).

SPECIAL FEATURES

The database does not have many special features. It is lacking in more recent web development or linking capabilities, like in wikis. The text runs together and is not broken up when it is retrieved. At the same time, though, it provides quick and free information for those researching the names and lives of those who have served in Congress.

USE

This information can be used for brief biographical reports about those who have served in Congress. It can also provided researchers or students starting points for research by providing names of those who have served according to different search criteria. Finally, the resource can be used to obtain locations of legislators’ papers and research papers at various locations. For example, former Sen. Bob Dole’s papers can be found at nine different locations.

CRITIQUE

This resource is a wonderful resource for any library to link to. It is completely free and updated as information is added to the database. Instead of spending money and waiting on a new directory to be published with information about the new Congress members, this directory provides access to information about these people without a wait time or without spending any money. It is easy to search and easy to use. While it does lack some features in terms of only organizing search results by last name, it still is a good resource to have access to.

REFERENCES

• Government Printing Office (2006, March 30). Congressional Documents: H. Doc. 108-222, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774-2005. Retrieved May 4, 2007, from http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/cdocuments/hd108-222/index.html
• Office of the Clerk. (n.d.) Member Biographical Information. Retrieved May 4, 2007, from http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/mem_bio/index.html
• Information originally posted on LI813 Spring 2007 Class Wiki; information last updated there, May 7, 2007.

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