LIV – Legislative Indexing Vocabulary

The Legislative Indexing Vocabulary (LIV) served as the thesaurus utilized by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for topic searches within the databases of the Library of Congress from 1973 until 2008. This regulated vocabulary facilitated access to legislative documents, public policy literature, and CRS outputs through specific topics. As electronic full-text documents and their associated search functionalities became more widely available, the detailed nature of LIV was deemed excessive. Consequently, efforts commenced to modernize and simplify the array of vocabulary terms that CRS analysts used to categorize and organize legislation. These initiatives led to a significantly more concise compilation of legislative subject terms, which has been in use since 2009.