On Wednesday, the Library of Congress is unveiling the new website Congress.gov in beta form to eventually replace its THOMAS system. It's Congress' first new search engine since THOMAS launched in 1995 when the Internet was in its infancy.

 

THOMAS gets 10 million visits each year. 

The 17-year-old search system became outdated, though, and required insider knowledge to navigate.

 

The new site is more like Google with one box to search all data. It can filter search results like a shopping site with categories of merchandise.

 

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing also can retrieve information from the site.