GPO Access OR Thomas?

An article on LLRX describes the difference between two nifty government web sites: GPO Access and THOMAS. Both sites are federal government owned and operated and offer sometimes overlapping content, which can be a blessing when one site is experiencing technical difficulties.

The article points out the strengths of the two online services as follows:

• GPO's focus, and its strength, is providing online versions of official documents.
  
• THOMAS's strength is the integration of data and documents from many legislative sources, including GPO Access.

Author Peggy Garvin recommends GPO Access when your needs are for straightforward document retrieval, but uses THOMAS when more extensive research is needed.

Also included at the end of the article is a summary of the features of GovTrack, a privately run legislative information site. When I clicked the link, it timed out and I didn't get a look at the site. Not sure if it takes a long time to load or if it was merely web gremlins.

http://www.llrx.com/columns/govdomain6.htm
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/
http://thomas.loc.gov/
http://www.govtrack.us/

Alphabet Soup Unraveled

We've all had this experience: you're having what you consider an intelligent conversation with someone you don't know all that well except in a professional sense. All of a sudden the other person slips in an acronym that you've never heard and, worse, you don't stop the conversation in its tracks to ask the meaning of the acronym. Coming to the aid of everyone who's come across an acronym but doesn't know what it might mean is the website Acronyma. Go ahead, learn the difference between SGML and XML. Great site for those of us who aren't using a PDA or prefer PURLs to pearls.

http://www.acronyma.com/