Where can you get back issues of the Federal Register online? The Law Library of Congress has now completed the collection of historical volumes of the Federal Register available online.
The Law Library acquired this collection from William S. Hein & Co., Inc. to make all volumes of the Federal Register available in open access to researchers. The collection starts with the first Federal Register in 1936 and contains all volumes through 1993. For more recent volumes, see federalregister.gov and FDSys (volumes 1994-2015). The Law Library website for the collection is https://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-register/.
The Federal Register is published every business day and contains executive orders and proclamations as well as federal agency public notices, proposed rules, and regulations. The final rules are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which is published annually.
At this time, we are offering the volumes in their full daily form. This is 14,586 issues from March 14, 1936 (or 1 Fed. Reg. 1) to Dec. 30, 1993 (or 58 Fed. Reg. 69169). It is helpful to know the exact date or issue of the rule you are researching, which can be found in the citation. To put the issues in chronological order, select “Date” under the “Sort by” pulldown and press “go.” On the left-hand side are facets that can narrow results by year or Federal Register volume.
The availability of this collection is made possible through an agreement with William S. Hein & Co., Inc. The agreement precludes bulk downloading and commercial reuse. We have also acquired a few other collections, so stay tuned for more information as they become available!
Please note: The link http://loc.heinonline.org/loc/ has been retired. The collections previously accessible through this link will be available on Law.gov. Please check our digital projects webpage for the current status and for new links when they become available.
Comments (8)
with federal register all records will be accurate.
Thank you.
How does this version of FR differ from this? http://loc.heinonline.org/loc/LOC?index=fedregloc
The content is the same on both websites, but the loc.heinonline.org website will eventually be removed as part of our transition plan. The promoted Federal Register collection is on Library of Congress servers, and the new presentation allows for enhanced searching and browsing functionality.
will the historical LC content be integrated into federalregister.gov and/or FDsys? Both of those sites currently have access 1994 – present, but no mention of the historical content.
The Law Library strives to fill in gaps like this one in the Federal Register, which is why we posted the historical volumes through 1993. We are not sure of the plans or timelines of either site, but with this new collection on our website, all volumes are publicly accessible.
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