Digitized Federal Register Volumes, 1960-1969

The The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the National Archives’ Office of the Federal Register (OFR), have digitally released historic issues of the Federal Register from 1960-1969. The complete collection of issues of the Federal Register from 1960 (Volume 25) to the present is now available digitally on GPO’s govinfo.

This project is digitizing a total of 14,587 individual issues, dating back to the first Federal Register in 1936. Nearly two million pages are being digitized.

The 1960s era of the Federal Register covers the Administrations of Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon, and includes such highlights as:

• The first executive order of the Kennedy administration expanded food aid to needy families: January 24, 1961
• Proclamation by President Johnson of a national day of mourning for President Kennedy: November 27, 1963
• Notice of an establishment of a quarantine period for extraterrestrial exposure for the astronauts on the Apollo 11 space mission: July 25, 1969

The Federal Register is the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents. It is updated daily by 6 a.m. and is published Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays.

Searching the Digitized Federal Register

The historic, digitized issues (Volume 59 and earlier) are being added to the current Federal Register collection. However, there are several differences between how you can access the digitized issues and how you can access the more recent issues:

• Digitized Federal Register issues are available for full-text searching. Some metadata fields can be used to craft specific searches using the basic or advanced search. Searchable metadata fields for the digitized issues (Volume 59 and earlier) are: Full-Text, Branch, Category, Dates, Government Author, Issue, SuDoc Class Number, Title, and Volume. Additional fields are available for searching the more recent volumes.
• Digitized Federal Register issues (Volume 59 and earlier) are available to browse and download at the issue level while the more recent issues are available at the article level.
• Digitized Federal Register issues (Volume 59 and earlier) are searchable using the citation search feature.

Learn more about the Federal Register and how to find information in the Federal Register on govinfo.