[Web4lib] Where on the Web is the U.S. Constitution?

[Richard Wiggins]

I wanted to look up something in the Constitution (the actual powers
granted to the vice president, for what that's worth) so I did a
Google search.  A Sponsored Link came up to this site at the Library
of Congress:

http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/creatingtheus/Pages/SlObjectList.aspx

It's entitled "Creating the United States."  It's an interactive
exhibition mounted by LOC.  It requires Microsoft Silverlight to view.
(There are some HTML links, no doubt for ADA compliance.)  It's pretty
cool stuff, giving a historical perspective -- e.g. how we got from
Confederation to United States.

But there is a problem.  The home page doesn't seem to have a link to
the text of the U.S. Constitution.  You may not be able to reproduce
what I saw, as the ad doesn't always come up, but it seems to me that
if LOC is going to put themselves at the top of the SERP when you
search for "U.S. Constitution" they should provide prominently the
actual text of the document.

If you'll try this search you will find many different presentations,
both within and without the Federal government.  Cornell Law's
presentation, which I think may date way back to early 90s, tops both
Google and Bing's hit lists.  It's interesting that no Federal site is
in the top 5.  We've got www.usconstitution.net and
www.constitution.org and Findlaw.  When we get to Federal sites, we've
got the US House, the US Senate, the Archives,  LOC, GPO ....

It is interesting to me that Cornell Law is "the" source that's
apparently most linked to, not one from the government itself.  But no
doubt the fact that there are so many competing versions are out
there, and Cornell garnered links early, combine to make that the
case.  Separation of powers, I guess.

/rich