Template:Biographical Directory of Congress

• United States Congress. "{{{name}}} (id: {{{id}}})". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

Template documentationviewedithistorypurge

{{Biographical Directory of Congress}} displays an external link to a specified article at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress website (bioguide.congress.gov).

Usage

In the following, {{Biographical Directory of Congress can be used instead of {{CongBio.

Unnamed parameters

• {{CongBio|ID}}
• {{CongBio|ID|NAME}}

Named parameters

• {{CongBio|id=ID}}
• {{CongBio|id=ID|name=NAME}}
• {{CongBio|id=ID|name=NAME|date=DATE}}
• {{CongBio|id=ID|name=NAME|date=DATE|inline=YES}}
• {{CongBio|id=ID|name=NAME|date=DATE|findagrave=GRID}}

There are some other additional parameters that carry default values:

author=author — defaults to United States Congress, but it can be overwritten
mode  =mode   — defaults to cs1 but can be set to cs2 (see WP:CS1)
ref   =ref    — for use with the {{harv}} templates for inline citations 
                    defaults to:{{harv|United States Congress|ID}}
                    If the author is set to something other than United States Congress
                    then it is also changed here. The ref parameter can be assigned another
                    value including none to unset the parameter.
accessdate=date — the usual name for the "Retrieved" parameter

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Biographical Directory of Congress in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Biographical Directory of Congress

This template displays an external link to a specified article at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress website (bioguide.congress.gov).

Template parameters[Edit template data]

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
ID	1 id	ID portion of the URL. Example: C000482 is the ID portion of http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000482	String	required
Name	2 name	Name of subject. If not given it defaults to the Wikipedia article name, without any disambiguation such as (politician). Default {{PAGENAME}}	String	optional
Access date	access-date accessdate date	Date the web page was accessed/retrieved.	Date	optional
Author	author	Value assigned to the "author" parameter of the {{cite web}} template. Default United States Congress	String	optional
Ref	ref	Value assigned to the "ref" parameter of the {{cite web}} template.	String	optional
Mode	mode	Value assigned to the "mode" parameter of the {{cite web}} template.	String	optional
No ID	noid	If this parameter is assigned a value (yes, 1, or anything) then the "id" parameter will not be displayed in parentheses after the "name" parameter.	String	optional
Inline	inline	If this parameter is assigned a value (yes, 1, or anything) then the leading asterisk/bullet is not displayed.	String	optional
Findagrave	findagrave	If this parameter is assigned a value, then the template will display an external link to the associated page at the Find a Grave website.	String	optional

Examples

In the following, {{Biographical Directory of Congress can be used instead of {{CongBio.

These examples all link to Henry Clay's biography, which is located at:

• http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000482

Unnamed parameters

Usage:

{{CongBio | C000482 | Henry Clay }}

Output:

• United States Congress. "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

Named parameters

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay }}

Output:

• United States Congress. "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

Access date

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay |accessdate= August 1, 2026 }}

Output:

• United States Congress. "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved August 1, 2026.

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay |date= August 1, 2026 }}

Output:

• United States Congress. "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved August 1, 2026.

Author

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay |author= }}

Output:

• "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

No ID

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay |noid= y }}

Output:

• United States Congress. "Henry Clay". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

Inline

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay |inline= yes }}

Output:

United States Congress. "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

Findagrave

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay |findagrave= 203 }}

Output:

• United States Congress. "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Henry Clay at Find a Grave

Findagrave and access date

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay |findagrave= 203 |date= January 26, 2010 }}

Output:

• United States Congress. "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved January 26, 2010.
• "Henry Clay". Find a Grave. Retrieved January 26, 2010.

Usage:

{{CongBio |id= C000482 |name= Henry Clay |findagrave= 203 |accessdate= January 26, 2010 }}

Output:

• United States Congress. "Henry Clay (id: C000482)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved January 26, 2010.
• "Henry Clay". Find a Grave. Retrieved January 26, 2010.

See also

• {{Find a Grave}}
• {{CongLinks}} - For members from 1991–present. It has BioGuide, Washington Post voting record, Open Secrets, FEC reports, Vote Smart, On The issues, Legistorm, StateSurge GovTrack and FindAGrave. This is preferred.
• {{Bioguide}} looks like this:  This article incorporates public domain material from Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Federal government of the United States.
• {{Cleanup Congress Bio}} puts articles in the category, Category:Biographical Directory of the United States Congress cleanup.
• Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Bioguide, a subpage of Project Congress, tracks how well information is imported from the Bioguide.

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Biographical Directory of Congress/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (edit | diff) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.