Friday, June 22, 2007

Introducing LOUIS: the Library Of Unified Information Sources

SUNLIGHT DEBUTS NEW ONE-STOP SEARCH ENGINE AND API FOR EASIER ACCESS:
WASHINGTON, DC – The Sunlight Foundation today launched a new search engine called LOUIS (ed: nice video demonstration here)– the Library Of Unified Information Sources – to improve public access to federal documents through an all-inclusive, catalogued and cross-referenced collection of official documents from the executive and legislative branches of government.

"Investigative reporters, bloggers, and concerned citizens are challenged to find federal documents across the varied official legislative and executive branch Web sites," said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. "Taking its name and inspiration from Justice Louis Brandeis, Sunlight created LOUIS to give citizens a one-stop, Google-like ability to search across disparate information sources in order to examine the workings of the federal government."

LOUIS makes it easy to search from a collection of over 300,000 documents from seven sets of federal documents dating back to 2001: the Congressional Record, congressional bills and resolutions, congressional reports, congressional hearings, GAO reports, presidential documents and the Federal Register. LOUIS, which updates its document depository daily, even allows users to set up a "standing query" as an RSS feed, to get alerts every time Congress or the executive branch takes action that references the subject of the initial query.

LOUIS differs from official government Web sites like THOMAS in that all of its data is available in a standardized, structured format. Likewise, Sunlight also made available the LOUIS API – Web access methods that any computer programmer can use to build their own application using the database and the computer code that powers LOUIS.

1 Comments:

Blogger Brad Marston said...

THIS IS NOT SPAM!

Hi,

I did a Google Blog Search for pork barrel spending and your blog was one of the results that came back. I have recently launched a site titled AZAMATTEROPRINCIPLE at www.no-pork.blogspot.com that is dedicated to fighting pork barrel spending and the resulting corruption by our federal government. The site pulls together in one place information and searchable/interactive databases regarding earmarks.

I am interested in getting likeminded bloggers to at least initially build a link list of blogs that either exclusively or primarily focus on eliminating pork barrel spending and/or restricting government spending. Eventually I want to put together a blogger coalition that others can join and publicize. I hope to include on-line petitions, polls, etc. to force our elected representatives to address this vital issue.

As I said above, THIS IS NOT SPAM. I am personally sending this out one e-mail at a time. If you would like to get involved I only ask that you respond to this e-mail with the URL of your blog and the title you would like me to use in the link list. I am not even asking you to put a link to my blog on there site (of course you are free to do so.)

All I am asking is that you check out AZAMATTEROPRINCIPLE at www.no-pork.blogspot.com and then reply to this e-mail if you would like to join together in this effort or click on the JOIN COFFERS link on the website.

Thank you,

Brad Marston
www.azamatterofact.com
www.no-pork.blogspot.com

June 22, 2007 at 9:21 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home