How often is THOMAS updated?
Most of the documents in THOMAS originate in the House and Senate, which in turn transmit them to the Government Printing Office (GPO) for printing and further electronic processing. GPO then transmits them to the Library of Congress, which performs some further processing before making them available on THOMAS. The Congressional Record is processed most rapidly. GPO processes a day’s proceedings from the Senate and House overnight and usually transmits them to THOMAS by 9 a.m. (or earlier) the next day. The text is normally available on THOMAS about one hour later. GPO usually needs at least one day to process bill text and digitize it for transmission. When the number of bills introduced is very large, typically, for instance, at the beginning of a session, or when the bill is very large, the processing may take longer. Once a bill is received by the Library of Congress, it takes only a few hours for it to become available online. The time it takes for committee reports to become ava
