GAO releases some of America's legislative history, but the rest is only available for pay from Thomson West

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Those of you following the saga of the sell-off of the federal legislative histories by the General Accountability Office might be interested in some good news and some bad news.

The good news is they have released 619,000 pages of histories, which were the pilot project scans they conducted. Looking at this data shows just how incredibly valuable these legislative histories are and how wonderfully talented the government employees are who compiled the information.

The bad news is the government *gave* millions of dollars worth of help to Thomson West which is raking in the bucks with the big database. In response to the data release by GAO, we have countered by offering to have scanned, at no direct cost to GAO, the same docs they gave to Thomson West. All we want is their hand-me-downs to give to a deserving public.

Link

(Thanks, Carl!)

See also:

Did the US gov't sell exclusive access to its legislative history to Thomson West?
GAO has sold exclusive access to legislative history down the river to Thomson West