Digitized Federal Register Volumes, 1980-1989

The The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), in partnership with the National Archives’ Office of the Federal Register (OFR), have digitally released historic issues of the Federal Register from 1980-1989. The complete collection of issues of the Federal Registers from 1980 (Volume 45) to 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 1980s era of Federal Register covers the Administrations of Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and includes such highlights as:

• The “Metric Conversion Policy for Federal Agencies”
• A final rule from the Coast Guard establishing a safety zone in the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor area during the 1984 Summer Olympic Games
• The declaration of a disaster loan area by the Small Business Administration following the 1989 San Francisco earthquake

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.