Help Update the Labor Archives in the United States and Canada: A Directory...Again

Help Update the Labor Archives in the United States and Canada: A Directory...Again

By Conor Casey, LAR Co-Chair

The Labor Archives in the United States and Canada: A Directory is an important topical listing of labor and labor-related collections that is valuable to both labor archivists and to scholars and researchers. Initial work on the directory was done in the early 1990s by the Wagner Labor Archives in New York City. A survey then conducted identified "archivists, librarians, and labor union staff who are collecting manuscripts, audio-visual materials, and artifacts that document the history of the trade union movement in the United States." Similarly, this directory includes repositories with partial holdings relating to labor and workers, as well as repositories whose entire holdings pertain to labor. The most recent updates were made in 2011 and very overseen by LAR Co-Chair Traci JoLeigh Drummond; in 2011 as well the directory was re-posted on the Labor Archives Roundtable website as well as the website of the Labor Archives of Washington. Previously known updates were made in 2002.

While creating the the Map of Directory of Labor Archives in the United States and Canada, it became apparent to me that many of the links were out of date or non-working. The move of the archives of the George Meany Archives to the University of Maryland was another very significant needed update, and the expansion of the listing for the Labor Archives of Washington's section--previously updated only slightly in 2011--needed to be accomplished as well. Moreover, in thinking about creating a topical portal to help researchers discover labor collections across repositories, it became apparent that we could really expand the directory to update listings from established repositories while adding collections are reposotiries with important labor collections that were previously unlisted.

To that end, I have created a shared Google Doc that will allow anyone with the link to edit their repository's listing and verify or update the information. In particular, web resources, URLs, and collection scope and content listings seem to be out of date. Please feel free to contribute it, add other repositories to it, and invite colleages at other repositories to collaborate.