Welcome to the first phase of LOUIS - the Library Of Unified Information Sources, a project of the Sunlight Foundation, and an effort, to paraphrase Justice Louis Brandeis, to illuminate the workings of the federal government. Our ultimate goal is to create a comprehensive, completely indexed and cross-referenced depository of federal documents from the executive and legislative branches of government. We are not there yet, but we can now offer these documents organized in a user-friendly interface, with a powerful search engine.

LOUIS currently contains, in fully searchable format, seven sets of federal documents:

• Congressional Reports
• Congressional Record
• Congressional Hearings
• Federal Register
• Presidential Documents
• GAO Reports
• Congressional Bills & Resolutions

In addition, LOUIS delivers these federal documents in an electronic, printable, text format for easier use. LOUIS also lets you access all the pages of a debate in the Congressional Record - or any other document - in one printer-friendly Web page.

You can search broadly for keywords or limit searches to a single document set or range of dates. LOUIS, which daily updates its document depository, even allows you to set up a "standing query" as an RSS feed. LOUIS can alert you every time there is a new document that references your query. For example, if you want to follow "lobbying reform," and Senators debate the lobbying reform measures of an ethics bill, the LOUIS notifier feed will send an update with a link to the relevant transcript from the Congressional Record.

Make LOUIS your one-stop search engine for research on the legislative and executive branch of government.

LOUIS is based on the work of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse.

About Sunlight Foundation

The Sunlight Foundation supports, develops and deploys new Internet technologies to make information about Congress and the federal government more accessible to the American people. Through its projects and grant-making, Sunlight serves as a catalyst to create greater political transparency and to foster more openness and accountability in government.

Since its founding, the Sunlight Foundation has issued nearly $2 million to groups to digitize existing information about Congress and those that use Internet technology to further Sunlight's goals. Additionally, the Sunlight Foundation has fostered its own projects such as Congresspedia, OpenCongress.org, Congress' Family Business and The Congressional Web Site Investigation.