Posted by AALL CRIV Bloog (3/21/14):
This is a reposting from the AALL Advocacy listserv, for those who did not see it yesterday.
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Hi Advocates—
Last week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reported out the Federal Register Modernization Act (HR 4195). The bill, introduced the night before the mark up, changes the requirement to print the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations to “publish” them, eliminates the statutory requirement that the CFR be printed and bound, and eliminates the requirement to produce an index to the Federal Register and CFR. The Administrative Committee of the Federal Register governs how the FR and CFR are published and distributed to the public, and will continue to do so.
While the entire bill is troubling, I most urgently need examples of why the Federal Register and CFR indexes are useful and how you use them. Stories in the next week would be of the most benefit, but later examples will help, too. I already have a few excellent examples from our Print Usage Resource Log – thanks to all of you who submitted entries! But the more cases I can point to, the better.
Interestingly, the Office of the Federal Register itself touted the usefulness of its index when it announced the retooled index last year: https://www.federalregister.gov/blog/2013/03/new-federal-register-index.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Emily Feltren
Director of Government Relations
American Association of Law Libraries
25 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 500
Washington, D.C. 20001
202/942-4233
Chair of MACRIV (Massachusetts Committee on Relations with Information Vendors)
Robert DeFabrizio