Do you often find yourself looking for the preamble of a final rule and don’t know where to start in the Federal Register? Keep reading to learn more in this short tip.
Watch this short video tutorial to learn how to locate a preamble in the Federal Register.
You may need to read through the matching text pages from the results page to find the correct page. However, in this case, if we select the first result, we will find our preamble, which includes a summary of the requirements in the law, the effective date, background information including a citation to the proposed rule, the CFR subpart, and more.
If you have a CFR citation, you can also use Advanced Searching. We can use a similar strategy as before to search across the full text for the citation and the action.
With several hundred search results, we can refine the results to include documents only from 2006. From here, we can either open each result or we can use the search within results option.
Next, add a keyword or term, such as “untreated citrus.” This narrows the results down to 1, which we see is the final rule.
A similar strategy can be used to find a docket number if you happen to have that handy. For this search let’s use the one-box search within the database. Enter the docket number into the search bar using quotations and select the Just Search for option.
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From the results page, select Final Rule from the Action facet.
The first result is the final rule we are searching for.
PRO TIP : Agencies and actions are only indexed from 1995 to current date in the Federal Register.
Finally, let’s search for the final rule using the agency name. Within the one-box search enter “animal and plant health inspection” AND citrus and select the Just Search for option. Next, refine results by the desired date. Choose Final Rule from the Action facet. And finally, select Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services” from the Agency facet. While we still have 5 results to sift through, we can see the third result is the final rule we are looking for.
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