Evergreen Links to GPO's CFR

If you need to link to a section of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), you can create an evergreen link quite easily.

GPO actually has a page for generating a link you can use on your intranet or Web site. In reality though, you don't even need that. By looking at the URL (see below), you can see where you need to fill in the year, title, part, section, etc.

Here is an example of the HTML page for a section entitled, "Dead Bodies": http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?YEAR=current&TITLE=42&PART=71&SECTION=55&SUBPART=&TYPE=TEXT

The important thing to note is that the section should not include the part. If you click on the link, you'll see that document says the section is 71.55. That is actually a combination of the part (71) and the section (55). If the URL above had "SECTION=71.55" instead of "SECTION=55," it would not work.

Another easy way to have the link created for you is to use the "Retrieve by CFR Citation" page. Just enter your cite, click "Go," and it will build the evergreen link for you.

Here's the bad news. Specifying the year as "current" ("YEAR=current"), should make it so that you don't have to update your link when the next edition of that CFR title becomes available. However, that's not the case. As of the date of this post, the link above is going to the 2005 edition even though the 2006 edition (containing that section) is available online. Make sure you check the table with revision dates before assuming you have the most current edition.

Absent Minded

Yes, it's me. After a rather long hiatus, I find myself...here.
I often think of this blog, primarily because I'm forever using the links I posted on it. It's been a great resource for me, if nothing else. And it was that thought that made me contemplate posting again. I can always use a bigger resource!

I was watching Paul Simon on Charlie Rose last night while I was contemplating all of this. Simon was talking about the evolution of his music and he said,

"You start with something that's simple and then you build it into a more complex problem. And when you solve that complex problem, then you start again with something that's simple, and you build it back up to a complexity and then you keep reducing it back to what's simple."

Simple Simon, right? I think that statement fits well with what we see on the blogosphere...constant transformations. It may be the nature of song-writing, but it is also the nature of the Internet. Perhaps it is the nature of creation as a whole.

There is a very good reason we always return to something simple. Less is more. So, I am going to go back to something simple and we'll see what happens. So, if you see this, expect to see a little more...or less....