SOCIAL SCIENCES LIBRARY
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY
LABOR STUDIES AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
SUBJECT SPECIALIST AND PRINCIPAL SELECTOR:
James P. Quigel, Head, Historical Collections and Labor Archives
Special Collections Library
E117 Paterno Library
863-3181 (phone)
863-5318 (fax)
jpq1@psulias.psu.edu
Created: 6/05
PURPOSE AND PROGRAMMATIC INFORMATION
The Penn State University’s Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations
(LSIR) is a long-standing, multi-disciplinary social science program that focuses on
work, employment and the employment relationship, workforce education, and human
resources and organizational behavior. Its has three central missions—to offer high
quality undergraduate and graduate degree programs, to engage in scholarly research on a
range of employment-related subjects, and to conduct outreach education programs for
unions and other organizations interested in the employment relationship. The
Department’s undergraduate labor studies program is one of the largest in the country,
offering B.A. and B.S. degrees in Labor and Industrial Relations (LIR)a five-year
integrated degree program leading to (LIR) B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Relations
and Human Resources (IRHR). The LSIR Department has also instituted a five-year
integrated B.S. / M.S. degree program in Spanish and IRHR.
The Department consists of nine full-time faculty members, six affiliated faculty, and six
adjunct instructors. LSIR faculty are drawn from numerous fields, including economics,
geography, history, industrial relations, human resources, law, management,
organizational behavior, and sociology. LSIR faculty members are productive scholars
whose work is published by major academic journals and leading academic presses. The
Department’s research program in the area of work and family has been recognized
nationally and internationally. Additional areas in which Department faculty are
conducting research are contemporary union administration and government, dispute
management and resolution, employment and employment relations in the health care
sector, women in the information technology workforce, and the changing career needs of
professional workers.
The LSIR Department’s extension program provides additional education and training
opportunities to union leaders and activists. These programs are designed to help labor
organizations represent their members more effectively in the workplace. The
Department sponsors annual conferences on occupational safety and health, labor
arbitration, and other union-related topics. LSIR’s outreach efforts also include online,
distance education courses that enable students to take LSIR courses where they live or
work. (Source: http://lsir.la.psu.edu/)
SCOPE OF THE COLLECTION
Beyond the traditional nomenclature of labor defined as “organized labor,” with its
emphasis on labor unions and collective bargaining and industrial relations, the Labor
fund supports the purchase of monographs and serials covering a variety of workforce
and employment-related topics and their intersection with economic and social policy
issues. These include: workforce and family issues; gender, ethnicity, and diversity in the
workplace; occupational health, safety and environmental issues; and business and
economics.
Research in labor studies is interdisciplinary and overlaps with research in the following
areas:
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History
Economics
Sociology
Law
Management and Organization
Behavioral Sciences
Political Science
Women’s Studies
Global Studies
African American Studies
I. Materials Collected
A. Languages Collected
Chief emphasis is placed on the purchase of English language titles and highly selected
labor monographs and materials in French (French-Canadian labor titles) and Spanish.
B. Geographical Limits
Though collection emphasis is placed on North America (United States, Canada, and
Mexico) and Western Europe, the Labor fund excludes no country or region and supports
the purchase of materials devoted to comparative and international labor studies, and
cross cultural analyses of global labor issues and international business markets.
C. Chronological Limits
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Primary collection emphasis is placed on labor topics and issues, and prominent figures
of the labor movement dating from the nineteenth century to the present; but
representative collection materials covering all time periods are purchased.
D. Major Publishers
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Taylor and Francis
Sage
University Presses
Cornell Studies in Industrial and Labor Relations, New York State School of
Industrial and Labor Relations
State University of New York Press, SUNY Series on American Labor History
E. Reference Works. Collect encyclopedias and dictionaries devoted to labor-specific
subjects, labor history, biographical directories profiling significant labor leaders, and
institutional labor union directories providing data and information on union membership
organization, departments and programs. Some highly selected anthologies and edited
works devoted to contemporary labor issues and labor historiography are collected.
Reference and research support is provided by the Social Sciences Library. Few indexes,
abstracts, or subject bibliographies in print format are selected.
F. Periodicals. Includes scholarly journals, and monthly and quarterly publications that
cover and review developments in labor and industrial relations and labor studies Areas
covered by periodicals include: collective bargaining and arbitration; labor and
employment law; human resources; compensation and benefits; labor economics; and
contemporary workforce issues. Some highly selected union periodicals (Steel Labor and
The United Mine Workers Journal) are also collected to complement primary source
materials contained with the Archives of the United Steelworkers of America and the
United Mine Workers of America, Historical Collections and Labor Archives, Special
Collections Library.
E-journals are increasingly prevalent in this subject area. E-journals are now accessible
through several core electronic databases—Pro Quest Research Library and Newspaper
Databases, Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe, JSTOR, Elsevier, Muse, and MetaPress-and through publishers such as Taylor and Francis and Sage.
G. Government and International Organizations. U.S. government publications and
documents are vital to labor studies research. Publications and reports generated by
Congress and its constituent labor and workforce committees, the U.S. Department of
Labor and its agencies—Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Occupational Safety and Health
Agency (OSHA)—and the National Labor Relations Board provide a multitude of
resources for studying historical and contemporary labor and industrial relations,
collective bargaining patterns, and work-related issues. Publications from state labor
agencies, especially Pennsylvania, are also of interest.
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United Nations, International Labour Organization, and European Union publications are
also important sources for researching and studying global labor and workforce issues.
Primary source materials from legislative bodies and annual reviews and reports by
government/ organizations yield valuable primary resources for comparative studies on
international labor and employment. Statistical sources also provide data for longitudinal
studies and demography of the global workforce.
H. Law/Legal Materials. The law school for the Pennsylvania State University is
located at Dickinson University, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Researchers and students in the
Labor Studies Program use the law collections to research labor case law and statutory
law in the areas of employment, collective bargaining, arbitration, discrimination,
affirmative action, and fair employment practices, health, disabilities, and family medical
leave, and benefits and compensation. National Labor Relations Board decisions and
regulatory law governing the administration of unions are also of chief interest to labor
researchers. Loose-leaf publications devoted to labor law and legal practices enable
students and researchers to keep current on trends and developments in the labor legal
field. An increasing amount of these publications are now accessible via electronic
format from the Bureau of National Affairs (Labor and Employment Law Library),
Westlaw Campus Library, Hein Online, and Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe (Legal
Research)
J. Generally Excluded
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Textbooks
Reprints of articles or other materials, especially if contained in journals
owned
Popular Works (autobiographies of labor leaders published by vanity
presses)
Union published manuals
Dissertations
Juvenile Materials
K. Areas of focus/strength: Institutional labor union collections, labor-related historical
manuscripts, and business records collected by the Historical Collection and Labor
Archives (Special Collections Library) provide invaluable core primary resources for
graduate study, research, and instruction. Labor archival collections are interdisciplinary
in nature and complementary to research in the subject areas of history, sociology,
political science, business, and women’s studies.
I. Video/DVD Collections. Videos and DVDs devoted to contemporary labor,
employment, domestic and global workforce issues, and historical documentaries on
labor are important to labor studies’ researchers and are frequently used/shown in the
classroom. Labor Video and DVD titles are selected and ordered in consultation with,
and upon the request of, faculty. Primary distributors and vendors for Video/DVD orders
include First Run/ Icarus Films and Films for Humanities and Sciences.
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II. Electronic Resources
A. Core Resources
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Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe
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Westlaw
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Hein Online
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BNA Labor and Employment Library
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ProQuest Research Library and Newspaper Databases
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Labor Full-Text Collection (Sage)
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Archives U.S.A.
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RGL Archival Resources
III. Related Collections
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News and Microform collections of labor organizational records, manuscript
collections, and documents format (e.g., Knights of Labor, American Federation
of Labor, Congress of Industrial Organization, American Association for Labor
Legislation, John L. Lewis Papers, Terence V. Powderly Papers, Eugene V. Debs
Papers, and Labor Union Constitutions & Proceedings, AFL-CIO Pamphlets).
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Labor Union Serials Collections (e.g., AFL-CIO News, Steel Labor, Mine
Workers’ Journal, The Amalgamated Journal-Iron, Steel and Tin Workers of
North America).
COORDINATING AND COOPERATIVE EFFORTS
I. Related Funds:
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HISTORY
ECON
SOCIO
LAW
MGMTORG
BEHSC
POLSC
WOMEN
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GLOBAL
SPAN
II. Data / Statistical Labor Studies faculty and students rely on the use of statistical
sources to research and study the demographic profile of American labor unions, their
membership, and the domestic and international workforce. Access to statistical information in
electronic format permits researchers to use and analyze subject-specific data more efficiently
and accurately for incorporation in scholarly publications and class assignments and projects.
Key titles include: Lexis/Nexis Statistical, TableBase, and U.S. Census. Data and statistics on
the international workforce can be accessed from: World Bank Group (subject-Labor and
Workers), MBS Online (subject-Labour Force), and UNSTATS.
III. Other Considerations
Sources that are consulted for collection development include Library Journal, Choice,
American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Labor History, International
Labor and Working Class History, Labor Studies Journal, New York Review of Books,
and New York Times Book Review.
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