Earlier this week we unveiled a powerful new interface to CSPAN as part of our Visual Explorer Lenses initiative. When viewing any CSPAN broadcast in the Visual Explorer, all explicit mentions of specific legislation are automatically converted to hyperlinks in the onscreen transcript that link directly to the full text and legislative history of the bill on Congress.gov. But what about the inverse? What if we are searching CSPAN transcripts and want to jump directly to the Visual Explorer to see any mentioned legislation in that session?
Today we are excited to announce that when keyword searching the entire decade-long archive of CSPAN, CSPAN2 and CSPAN3 in the TV Explorer, the search results link directly to the Visual Explorer with the CSPAN legislative deep linking enabled. Using the new offset linking we announced earlier this week we were able to seamlessly integrate these two experiences, bringing keyword search and legislative deep linking together.
For example, when searching for House Joint Resolution 40, results include both a presidential campaign broadcast from 2019 in which the resolution is mentioned in the context of guns, a 2017 nomination hearing in which it is mentioned only in the context of disapproval, and an earlier 2017 broadcast from the House in which it is mentioned in the context of disapproval of a Social Security amendment.
To an ordinary citizen, unfamiliar with Congress' reuse of legislation numbers with each Congress, this might at first glance appear to be an error: after all, how can the same bill be about two entirely different topics and why would Congress be debating the same bill two years later? In reality, they refer to two entirely different pieces of legislation in two different Congresses. Unlike for all other channels, which simply link to the Internet Archive's main TV Archive interface, for CSPAN channels, the TV Explorer now links directly to the Visual Explorer, where the new legislative deep linking lens automatically converts all mentions of specific numbered legislation into hyperlinks directly to the complete Congress.gov record.
For example, clicking on the Swalwell campaign announcement search result jumps to the Visual Explorer where the mention of "house joint resolution 40" is highlighted. Unfortunately, in this case he is actually referring to a resolution from the previous congress, rather than to the current one. We are working on approaches to allowing the system to recognize references to past bills as well as unnumbered bills, but this will require further research. However, by clicking on the legislative link in the transcript, the user immediately sees that the bill linked to is unrelated to guns and so can instantly see that this must refer to a historical bill. In contrast, the 2017 broadcasts link to the correct bill, titled "H.J.Res.40 – Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Social Security Administration relating to Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007". At first glance a bill about social security would seem to have little to do with guns until one sees the bill Summary that summarizes it as "The rule implements a plan to provide to the National Instant Criminal History Background Check System the name of an individual who meets certain criteria, including that benefit payments are made through a representative payee because the individual is determined to be mentally incapable of managing them."
Searching for the general phrase "house joint resolution" in the TV Explorer yields a range of legislation with helpful names like "house joint resolution 45" and "house joint resolution 39" and house joint resolution 27" and so on. What precisely are these pieces of legislation? Simply by clicking on the links in the transcripts these are revealed to be "H.J.Res.45 – Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to "Waivers and Modifications of Federal Student Loans", "H.J.Res.39 – Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Commerce relating to "Procedures Covering Suspension of Liquidation, Duties and Estimated Duties in Accord With Presidential Proclamation 10414" and "H.J.Res.27 – Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "Revised Definition of 'Waters of the United States'", respectively.
We are tremendously excited about this new joint keyword search + legislative deep linking interface for CSPAN and the new opportunities it makes possible!