From an In Custodia Legis (Law Library of Congress Blog) Post by Jennifer González:
Last year, we added Statutes at Large to our Digitized Material page. Initially, each Congress from 1789-1950 had a webpage that included a large PDF file of all statutes for that congressional session. Then we began splitting the large PDF documents into smaller pieces, which meant that we had to browse each statute, add metadata to describe it, and create a chart with the links to the statute. Adding these smaller PDFs will allow for quicker downloads, easier perusal of statutes, and more refined searches on our website based on the individual statute.
With the help of many, we currently have 19 Congresses (that’s 38 years!) available by chapter: Congresses 19-24 (1826-1836) and 44-56 (1875-1901). We have many more volumes in progress and will continue adding them to the website as they are finished.
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One of the major advantages in adding individual descriptive metadata to each statute, is that searching and using facets to find statutes is much easier.
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