For FRASER’s 15th birthday in 2019, we explored the site’s evolution from historical offshoot of FRED to a digital library in its own right. For our 20th birthday, we’re celebrating by choosing some of our favorite treasures of economic history that we’ve added to the site in each of the past 20 years.
2004
On July 1, 2004, FRASER went live with its first few titles, among them Economic Indicators for 1948-2004. FRASER’s debut followed in the footsteps of FRED, the St. Louis Fed’s hub for data. The launch of FRASER demonstrated the St. Louis Fed’s longstanding data distribution efforts and its commitment to providing access to historical economic data for generations of researchers.
2005
FRASER’s partnerships have always been a cornerstone of the work we do. Our very first partnership was formed in 2005 with the Government Publishing Office (GPO) to provide permanent public access to digitized Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) publications and associated metadata. In 2018, we published a blog post detailing our partnerships to date, from GPO to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). As part of that partnership, the Economic Report of the President back to 1947 was added to FRASER’s collections in 2005.
2006
In FRASER’s early days, the St. Louis Fed approached Alan Meltzer with the suggestion that the source materials for his seminal work A History of the Federal Reserve be digitized and placed on FRASER. Meltzer graciously agreed and shared his materials with the FRASER team. From this project, the team created two significant FRASER additions: The first is a digitized collection of items cited by Dr. Meltzer, and the second is a linked bibliography of all of the sources cited by Dr. Meltzer, with links to available digital copies on FRASER or other sources. Learn more about the collection in the 2016 Inside FRASER blog post “Meltzer’s History of the Federal Reserve.”
2007
In 2007, FRASER posted selected items digitized in partnership with the Missouri Historical Society from their William McChesney Martin Jr. Papers collection. FRASER librarians discussed this digitization work and its impact on digitization and arrangement of our archival collections in a blog post created in 2018.
Also in 2007, FRASER went back to its roots with some statistical data: Our collection of the Statistical Atlases of the United States began that year with the Statistical Atlas of the United States: Based on the Census of 1870. This publication showed United States demographic, economic, and political data across a series of charts, carefully digitized and beautifully presented in full color in the pages of FRASER.
2008
FRASER has always been a natural fit for the important historical statements made by those who played major roles in the formation of the Federal Reserve. Our first such collection came to fruition in 2008 with the Statements and Speeches of Presidents of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Today, FRASER’s collection of thousands of speeches spanning more than a century includes materials from presidents from every Federal Reserve Bank, members and Chairs of the Board of Governors, Federal Open Market Committee participants, as well as FDIC officials and chairmen. In 2024, FRASER absorbed the data from the retiring FOMC Speak website and created a timeline of the speeches and statements of FOMC officials from 2010-2023, with links to full-text of speeches in FRASER.
2009
Following the stock market crash of 1929, Congress commissioned an investigation of business practices that may have contributed to the crash. Between April 1932 and May 1934, the Senate banking committee conducted dozens of hearings, creating more than 9,000 pages of transcripts. The final month of hearings and the final report were led by Ferdinand Pecora, whose name became synonymous with the anti-corruption investigation. The Pecora Commission Hearings, 1932-1934, were added to FRASER in February 2009, the first FRASER collection of its kind and an important record of the investigation into the causes of the stock market crash.
2010
In 1936, L. Merle Hostetler created an 85-foot-long chart titled “75 Yrs. of American Finance: A Graphic Presentation, 1861 to 1935.” Hostetler, a financial economist and then Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (1943-1964), added the years 1936-1938 to the chart later. The chart was carefully digitized by the FRASER team and added to the collection in early 2010. The complex physical nature of the material required a special “presentation” viewing option to allow seamless scrolling through the chart from left to right, in the way that Hostetler intended the chart to be used.
2011
FRASER received a new look at the end of 2011: The redesigned website included enhanced site navigation with the addition of topics and timelines, chronological browsing, and a more advanced search feature.
Along with new features, exciting new materials were being added to the collections, such as the Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Annual Reports of the Comptroller of the Currency, and A Modern History of FOMC Communications: 1975-2002.
2012
Another year, another partnership! In April 2012, diaries from the papers of Charles Sumner Hamlin at the Library of Congress were added to the growing collection of archival materials in FRASER. Hamlin’s papers, a treasure trove of diaries, indexes, scrapbooks, correspondence, speeches, and brochures, primarily relate to the formation and early history of the Federal Reserve System. Hamlin served as the first Governor (now Chair) of the Federal Reserve Board from August 10, 1914, to August 9, 1916, and remained on the Board until February 3, 1936. Learn more about Hamlin and the collection in this 2017 Inside FRASER blog post.
2013
As part of the lead-up to the 2013-2014 Federal Reserve centennial, FRASER partnered with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to digitized thousands of pages of archival documents related to the Fed. One lesser-known part of this treasure trove was the papers of Winfield Riefler, an influential economist and public servant. Riefler was a friend of John Maynard Keynes, helped found the Federal Housing Administration, and later was instrumental in negotiating the 1951 Treasury-Fed Accord.
2014
These days, reports of balance sheet and income statement information are filed quarterly; but originally, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (supervisor of national banks) would issue a “call” for the reports on specific, but irregular, dates, leading to the colloquial term “call reports.” In 2014, the FRASER team added call reports filed by Federal Reserve member banks from 1916-1959. This 2018 Inside FRASER blog post discusses our largest collection.
Also in 2014, the librarians behind FRASER implemented a MODS metadata schema, and the website underwent a redesign. The redesign included an in-page PDF viewer and a new browse-by-date functionality.
2015
In 2015, FRASER added new issues of the Board’s data publications, known as “statistical releases.” The bulk of these were digitized in 2013-2014 in conjunction with the Fed’s centennial, but the FRASER team has continued to seek out and digitize more issues. These days, it is the most complete collection available anywhere, with more than 80,000 issues across more than a hundred titles going back to 1915.
2016
FRASER became the home of the Financial Crisis timeline in 2016. This timeline originally appeared on the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis website, and included materials that agencies created in response to the 2007-2009 financial crisis, captured by the FRASER team.
2017
In 2017, FRASER added another new curated timeline, this time on the 1951 Treasury-Fed Accord. The accord separated government debt management from monetary policy, laying the foundation for the modern independent Fed. Learn more about the timeline in this 2017 blog post or read up on the history of the accord in this Federal Reserve History essay.
2018
Through the years, the FRASER team has collected, digitized, and described the Bulletins of the Women’s Bureau, from the first bulletin, published in 1919, to the last, in 1983. The bulletins encapsulate the experiences of working women across the past century and how they have changed through time. This collection and the history of the work of the Women’s Bureau have been described in several blog posts by the FRASER staff.
Another important addition made to the collection in 2018 was the Records of the Division of Negro Economics, 1919-1921, digitized in partnership with NARA. This collection, from a short-lived Department of Labor office led by Black sociologists and researchers, demonstrated the conditions of Black workers and developments in their participation in business and agriculture.
2019
In partnership with the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University, FRASER digitized several series of the papers of Paul A. Volcker, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve from 1979-1987. Volcker’s papers provide a first-person view of the changing economic and monetary policies of the late 1970s and the effects of those policies on everyday Americans. Learn more in this 2021 Inside FRASER blog post.
2020
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FRASER team archived documents that detailed key events in the global socioeconomic disruption and its aftermath. The Timeline of Events Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic was updated in real-time, and today it provides a concise look at the economic and financial impact of the pandemic.
2021
Our collections include a wealth of materials from the Department of Labor. One key publication is the Monthly Labor Review from the Bureau of Labor Statistics within the Department of Labor. The publication began in 1915 and is still being published today. In 2021, FRASER digitized the collection, allowing researchers access to over a century of analysis and research written by economists, statisticians, private sector professionals, and state and local government specialists on a wide variety of topics—the labor force, employment, the economy, inflation, productivity, wages, prices, and more.
2022
FRASER has digitized many commercial publications and added The Northwestern Banker, 1897-1988 to our collection in 2022. The Northwestern Banker reported on banks and banking in the Northwest, providing information about bank personnel, reports on bankers’ conventions, and important area industries. This publication was followed by several other regional banking publications, including the Central Western Banker (1928-1935), Commercial West (1901-1962), and the Mid-Continent Banker (1925-1986). These publications offer a snapshot of changes to commercial banking through the years, from banking regulations to drive-through teller technology.
2023
In November 2023, the FRASER team began adding digitized bulletins and circular letters from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. These circulars date back to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1914 and were the main form of communication from the Chicago Fed to banks in the 7th Federal Reserve district. The collection contains over 3,000 bulletins that provide information regarding community relations, bank services, and supervision and regulation, in addition to detailing historical events through the lens of the Chicago Fed. The Chicago Fed bulletins joined similar collections from across the Federal Reserve, including circulars from the Dallas Fed, St. Louis Fed, and the New York Fed, and the Mimeograph Letters and Statements of the Board.
2024
So far in 2024, the FRASER team has added a long-requested collection of materials of the Governor’s Conference, which includes agendas, minutes, proceedings, and other documents related to the meetings of the Federal Reserve Governors Conference, 1914-1935. Another recent addition to the collection is the New England Economic Review from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a research publication concerning the economic, business, and industrial conditions in New England, 1919-2004.
What’s next for 2024 and beyond? Stay connected and find out about all of the great additions, enhancements, and FRASER news via our newsletter or our What’s New page!
© 2024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.
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