Federal Regulations:

Federal regulatory research often poses a challenge to both the general reference librarian and the documents specialist. This article provides a brief overview of the history of regulation, emphasizing developments since the 1970's and the role of the Office of Management and Budget; reviews the federal rulemaking system from proposed rule to codification to revision; includes an annotated list of the major official and privately produced regulartory publications; and concludes with suggested approaches to five sample research problems. These sample problems range from finding and updating regulations on a specific subject to keeping informed about an agency's regulatory plans.