September 2023 Release Notes

The GovInfo team worked hard over the summer months developing new features and functionality. This included 105 individually tracked system changes such as improvements to how values in filters for search results are sorted, a public preview of GovInfo’s API Search Service, the addition of thousands of cataloged, born-digital content packages that were acquired through GPO’s Cataloging and Indexing Program, design improvements, collection and system enhancements, bug fixes, and much more.

Preservation Agreement with NARA: In September 2023, GPO and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) signed an updated Memorandum of Understanding reaffirming GPO as an archival affiliate. The affiliate agreement, first signed in 2003, established mutually agreed upon standards for the permanent preservation of and public access to the digital content on GPO’s system of online access, GovInfo.

New Content: Over 63,000 content packages (roughly equivalent to one bound printed document) were made available from the period of July 1 to September 30. Notable submissions since the last release included U.S. Statutes at Large, Volume 131 (115th Congress, 1st Session); 1,745 digitized Congressional Serial Set reports, documents, and journals; 36,285 born-digital content packages that were acquired through GPO’s Cataloging and Indexing Program; 1,064 digitized Congressional Hearings; interim packages for the Privacy Act Issuances collection; House Rules and Manual for the 118th Congress; the Spring 2023 Semiannual Regulatory Agenda: Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions; the Federal Register Index for July 2023 ; 16 Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) publications; 36 Railroad Retirement Board publications; partnership publications, such as Program and Itinerary: Training of Teachers in Quality Control, International Cooperation Administration (1956) through a partnership with the University of Washington; and more.

Feature Articles: Eight feature articles were published from the period of July 1 to September 30. These included articles commemorating Independence Day, 70th Anniversary of the Korean War Armistice, September 11th, World Humanitarian Day , Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, and the 175th Anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. Other highlights included a preview of GovInfo’s API Search Service and National History Day® 2023-2024, our resource article for the annual national history contest.

Improvements to the User Interface:

• Default Sorting on Search Filters – In response to feedback gathered during a recent usability study conducted by graduate students at the University of Michigan, the default sorting behavior was adjusted on certain search results filters so that the results are now organized alphabetically or numerically instead of by count, or number of results matching a search’s filters. For example, the “Date Published” filter now sorts values chronologically from New to Old instead of by the filter with the largest number of results at the top. This will help users find content by date more easily because they will see the more recent, relevant filters at the top. It is still possible to change the setting to see the filter values by count. This change was also made to the “Collection” and “Organization” filters.



• Content Details Page Styling – In addition, based on feedback received from a recent usability study of GovInfo, GPO changed the title on every Content Details page so it displays more prominently.
  The image below shows an example of the new look and feel of the title display on a Content Details page.
  
  
  

GovInfo API Search Service

Over the summer, the team released a public preview of the new Search Service in the GovInfo API. This service enables users to programmatically retrieve search results using similar queries to what is available on the GovInfo web site. For more information, see this Search Service article discussing the new functionality in detail. GovInfo API users can provide additional feedback and view example requests along with responses in GPO’s API GitHub . At the end of the year, plans are in place to move the API Search Service to a full production state.

Cataloged Born-Digital Content

Part of GPO’s Cataloging and Indexing Program (44 U.S.C. §§ 1710, 1902-1903) includes standard processes that catalog and capture digital versions of Federal government publications. In late 2022, the capability to bring these publications and metadata into GovInfo was completed. During this release, GPO ingested thousands of publications and metadata acquired through this program. This body of content in GovInfo will continue to grow. For example, here are of some of the catalogued publications available in GovInfo from the Department of Health and Human Services. Generally, the catalogued publications in this set are published by a variety of Federal agencies, cover a myriad of topics, and have published dates ranging from the current decade back to the 1800s. Explore them all from the search results here. Below are cover images of some of these publications.

Additional Enhancements:

• Performed a major upgrade to the internal content management system and repository components.
• Implemented a major framework upgrade for the web application.
• Performed initial development to support the upcoming Congressionally Mandated Reports collection.
• Updated the main menu mobile styling for Android devices.
• Fixed a small bug that caused the “scroll-to-top" button to not work consistently on the Search Results page for iOS devices.
• Addressed how iOS Safari uses a browser default blue color on buttons without a specific text color assigned.
• Incorporated a change to show a blue outline on active pagination items in the Search Results.
• Updated the search widget form field background color.
• Implemented new mobile menu transition animation for Search Results.
• Applied updates to the Search Widget citation search related to the selection of menus and background labels.
• Made the Bulk Data error page styling clearer.
• Updated the design for the Congressional Hearings collection to improve the display of House Small Business Committee document number.
• Updated the U.S. Congressional Serial Set collection to handle large files better.
• Made changes to the Congressional Record collection to support the extraction of bill references from House amendment granules.
• Added new patterns to improve recognition and parsing of short titles in Congressional Bills.
• Improved Congressional Committee parsing for Congressional Bills.
• Added a new endpoint to the Link Service to retrieve the text of individual House Amendments within the Congressional Record.
• Updated the Link Service for the U.S. Code collection to increase “uscode.section.maxlength.”
• Incorporated a fix for missing appendix granules in the U.S. Code collection.
• Improved title parsing to recognize recurring backticks (``) as double quotes in text files.
• Updated the Compilation of Presidential Documents collection browse description to include search links for the latest versions of the supplemental materials (i.e., Acts Approved by the President, Checklist of White House Press Releases, Digest of Other White House Announcements, Nominations Submitted to the Senate).
• Performed an update on the Congressional Record collection to improve display of Amendment information on details pages.
• Added a new lastModified field operator for both the API Search Service and the search interface to allow users to restrict their searches to new or modified content within desired ranges.
• Updated the public API to include docket text in the granule summary endpoint for the U.S. Courts collection.
• Made an update to the Congressional Committee Prints collection to allow the accessId to be edited if no jacketId or number is parsed from the package.
• Updated the contextual help language for the “Page” metadata field on the Statutes at Large details pages.
• Performed updates to capture warnings for missing graphics files during e-CFR collection preprocessing.
• Harmonized Statutes at Large collection browse and citation search display listing of volume and year information.
• Resolved an issue within the Additional Government Publications collection that caused MODs transform problems.
• Removed the Twitter social sharing icon from various pages.
• Resolved an issue with the Bound Congressional Record collection search mechanism.
• Updated the search summary date facet format and navigator checkbox state.
• Incorporated updates to automated testing processes to improve speed and precision.
• Performed various software and security upgrades on multiple internal and external components.