On July 1, 2004, the St. Louis Fed launched its new digital library FRASER as part of its ongoing work to expand public access to economic information. In 2024, FRASER not only celebrated its 20th birthday, but also added more than 20,000 new items with over 500,000 pages to the collection.
Federal Reserve Materials
In 2024, FRASER’s large collection of statements and speeches from Federal Reserve leaders grew significantly, with more than 1,500 new speeches from Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City, Richmond, and San Francisco, dated 1914 to 2024. As an added bonus, the FRASER team reprocessed hundreds of older speeches using higher-quality modern OCR (optical character recognition) software to improve users’ ability to search and analyze these unique texts.
In addition, FRASER added hundreds of issues of public information and research publications from across the Federal Reserve System. Highlights include thousands of items in more than a dozen titles from the Atlanta Fed (including the archives of Macroblog), historical Minneapolis Fed data publications (1928-1997), press releases of the Board of Governors (1996-2006), and new and expanded runs of series from the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Richmond, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and St. Louis.
Photograph of Meeting of Officers and Directors of all Federal Reserve Banks, Washington, October 20-22, 1914, part of the archival papers of the Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System on FRASER
One significant collection added in 2024 is the meeting documents of the Federal Reserve Governors Conference (1914-1935). Prior to the enactment of the Banking Act of 1935, the chief executive officer of each Federal Reserve Bank held the title of governor. The Governors Conference was the precursor to the modern Conference of Presidents, which is made up of the presidents of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks and meets periodically to identify, define, and deliberate issues of strategic significance to the Federal Reserve System; to consider matters of common interest; and to consult with and advise the Board of Governors. These papers, previously available only in physical archives, offer a unique insight into the operations of the early Fed and have been highly cited in histories of the System, including Allan Meltzer’s History of the Federal Reserve.
As our Fed materials have expanded, the FRASER team has also added more curated collections to help our users browse relevant documents. In particular, the new Federal Reserve Bank History theme collects histories and similar documents by and about specific Federal Reserve Banks. If you’re interested in materials on the history of the entire Fed System, you can still find those in the Federal Reserve History theme.
Historical Context Collections
Cover of the January 1924 issue of Bankers Monthly
To provide key context for our historical Fed and other policy documents, FRASER also added a wealth of materials from across the financial and economic spheres. Highlights of banking industry publications include 20th- and late 19th-century series Bankers Magazine, Bankers Monthly, and Commercial West. New government publications and collections added include annual reports and journal of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (1950s-1980s); consular reports, special consular reports, and State Department reports on foreign trade and manufacturing (1850s-1910s); and the 1992 history of the Comptroller of the Currency.
FRASER’s New Document Viewer
In mid-2024, FRASER got a bit of a birthday makeover, with a new simplified color scheme and 20th anniversary logo. The site also debuted a new document viewer with a Deep Zoom function that allows users to more easily zoom in on detailed maps and tiny data tables and removes the need to download large PDFs to view long documents (such as the 800-page Historical Statistics of the United States). While there are some changes to the interface, FRASER still allows users to view, download, and cite the hundreds of thousands of documents in our collection. Users who want a printed tour of the new viewer or some refresher tips can learn more about the site’s features in the relaunched How to Use FRASER guide.
Features for FRASER Fans
In the spirit of a celebratory year, FRASER also invites our users to revisit “20 years of treasures,” chosen for the site’s 20th anniversary. If you’re interested in a more hands-on activity, you can download and print our FRASER coloring book, chock-full of images adapted from historical documents and text created with input from our award-winning economic education colleagues.
Last but not least, the FRASER team thanks the Society of American Archivists for honoring the site and our work with the 2024 Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes an archives institution, education program, nonprofit organization, or government organization that has given outstanding service to its public and has made an exemplary contribution to the archives profession.
Happily, great FRASER news doesn’t come just once a year! Stay up to date by subscribing to our monthly newsletter or follow the latest additions via our What’s New page (and its RSS feed, if you prefer). Have a research question? Email our reference desk.
© 2025, 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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