GPO Completes Digitizing All Issues of the Federal Register

The The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the National Archives’ Office of the Federal Register (OFR), have digitized every issue of the Federal Register, dating back to the first one published in 1936. A total of 14,587 individual issues, or nearly two million pages, has been digitized. The complete Federal Register from 1936 (Volume 1) to the present is now available digitally on GPO’s govinfo.

Some highlights from the early issues of the Federal Register:

• The first executive order published in the Federal Register on March 14, 1936, enlarged the Cape Romain Migratory Bird Refuge in South Carolina.
• The first war-related Presidential proclamations following the declaration of war on Japan was published in the December 10, 1941 Federal Register issue.
• The August 25, 1958 issue contains the Executive Order outlining changes to the flag following the admittance of Hawaii as a state.

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) have been 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 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 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 are searchable using the citation search feature.

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