Digitized Federal Register Volumes, 1970-1979

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 1970-1979. The complete collection of issues of the Federal Register from 1970 (Volume 35) 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 1970s era of the Federal Register covers the Administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, and includes such highlights as:

• Pardon of President Richard Nixon by President Gerald Ford: September 10, 1974
• Embargo by the Postmaster General on acceptance of mail of all classes destined for New York City and outlying areas due to a work stoppage at the Post Office Department: March 21, 1970
• A final rule to establish the quantity of California-Arizona lemons that can be sent to market from April 8-14, 1979, due to marketing situation in the lemon industry: April 6, 1979

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.