QUICK GUIDE GPO Access Searching the FEDERAL REGISTER MCINTYRE LIBRARY ( UW-EAU CLAIRE ( EAU CLAIRE, WI 54702-5010 ( (715) 836-3859ITM ( INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT GPO Access is a free Internet site maintained by the U.S. Government. It includes full-text searchable documents for regulatory, business, Congressional, and databases like the Federal Register, Congressional Record, and Commerce Business Daily. Consult the GPO Access Quick Guide for detailed information on the site. This guide discusses search strategies plus database-specific information for the Federal Register . GPO ACCESS GPO Access is available at the GPO Access site on the World Wide Web at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/index.html Access is also available at Depository Gateway sites, such as: University of California at: http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/ Additional access instructions are available in the Government Publications Department and online. THE FEDERAL REGISTER The Federal Register from 1995 to today (Vol 60-63) is available in full text, searchable format on GPO Access. Daily updates for the current copy are received by 6 a.m. The 1994 Federal Register is also available, but contains no fields or section identifers. Federal Register documents are available as ASCII text and Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) files The Unified Agenda is available as a separate database. BASIC SEARCH TIPS FOR ALL GPO ACCESS DATABASES To select a database(s), highlight your choice or click in a check box, depending on which version you have accessed. Enter a word or phrase. Enclose phrases in quotation marks. To use Boolean logic in a search form, input AND, OR, or NOT in captial letters. The default is OR if you do not specify AND or NOT. Broaden the search by using an asterisk. For example, congress* will also search for congresses, congressional, etc. Use Advanced searches to search named fields when available. Read database online help to achieve maximum search success. FEDERAL REGISTER SEARCHABLE FIELDS There are 10 searchable fields for this database. Issue Date date Sunshine Act Meetings sunshine (used for Jan. 1995- Feb. 1996 documents) Section Name section Presidential Documents presidential Rules and Regulations rules Contents contents Proposed Rules proposed Reader Aids reader Notices notices Corrections corrections A field can be searched by typing the field name, followed by an equals sign (=), followed by the term(s) that are sought. Searchers may link to the ADVANCED search pages which contain established fields. If no field is specified then all fields will be searched. Identification Codes: Each document in the Federal Register databases will be displayed in the results list with an identification code followed by the initial words of the title. For example: fr17ja97R. In this example, fr stands for Federal Register,17ja97 is the issue date, and R indicates a document from the Rules and Regulations section. Other identifiers are A for Reader Aids; C for Contents; E for Presidential Documents; P for Proposed Rules; N for Notices; S for Sunshine Act Meetings; and X for Corrections.(3) GPO Access online help search examples: Table of Contents by Date Query: section =contents AND date=1/22/97 Result: fr22ja97C CONTENTS This search retrieves the Federal Register Table of Contents for a specific date. It retrieves documents from the contents section as published in the Federal Register for January 22, 1997. A date used by itself will result in a list of all documents with that date. The most recent issue of the Federal Register TOC is searched by clicking on that option on the search page. Agency Name Query: "social security administration" AND benefits Alternative: social ADJ security ADJ administration AND benefits Results: fr13ja97N Parisi By Cooney v. Chater: Reduction of fr22ja97P Regulations implementing the Federal Coal This search retrieves documents based on the name of the issuing agency. Modify the agency name by date, subject or field to make the search more specific. Subject Query: "lead paint" Alternative: lead ADJ paint Result: fr07ap95N Federal Property Suitable as Facilities To fr11se95N Guidance on Identification of Lead- Based This demonstrates the functioning of the ADJ operator (or use of a phrase in quotation marks) and the value of the relevance ranking feature. Although the search specified the phrase "lead paint" (lead ADJ paint), the results include the documents with the term lead-based paint as well. The ADJ operator retrieves not only documents where words are immediately adjacent, but also those where the words are separated by up to 20 characters. Relevance is computed based on several factors, including the occurrence of the search terms in the document title, the frequency of the terms as a percentage of the total document size and conformance with the exact search phrasing. In the search, the first document (fr07ap95N) references "lead paint" throughout and received a higher ranking than the document with "lead-based paint" (fr11se95N), although both were considered responsive to the query. Final/Proposed Rules Query: rules= "air quality" Result: fr08ja97R Approval and Promulgation of Implementation fr17ja97R Approval and Promulgation of Implementation This search retrieves final rules on a specific subject in the 1997 Federal Register database. It retrieves documents that are in the Rules and Regulations section of the Federal Register and contain the phrase "air quality". Substituting the field "proposed" for "rules" would limit the search to Proposed Rules on that subject. The query section=rules AND date=1/17/97 will retrieve rules on that date, regardless of the subject. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part Number Query: "7 cfr part 33" Results: fr08ja97R Regulations Issued Under the Export Apple and This search retrieves a Federal Register Document based on the CFR Part affected by the rule or proposed rule. It is necessary to include the word "part" in order to limit the query to the introductory material in each document that references the affected parts. NOTE: the summary can be viewed to determine the relevance of the retirieved documents before viewing or saving the full document, a particularly useful feature for large documents. C:\guides\gposerch.doc (June-98 Mary Hayden UW-Eau Claire GPO ACCESS ( 2 GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS DEPARTMENT