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Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada, and American Federation of Labor (AFL), Early Federation records

 Collection 0003-LBR-RG4-010

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada, founded in 1881, was the immediate predecessor of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) founded in 1886. This volume represents both organizations and includes handwritten minutes committee and council meetings, clippings, council votes and communications, and a circular.

Dates

  • 1881-1888

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open to the public and must be used in the Special Collections reading room. Researchers must register and agree to copyright and privacy laws before using this collection.

Conditions Governing Use

Photocopies or digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with Special Collections and University Archives duplication policy.

Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder.

Archival materials may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a researcher finds sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.

Extent

1 Items : Bound volume, red leather

Scope and Content of the Collection

This volume contains approximately fifty pages of material dating from 1881 to 1888. It includes handwritten minutes of five FOTLU Legislative Committee meetings (1881-85), clippings of the printed proceedings of the 1886 FOTLU convention, handwritten minutes of four AFL Executive Council meetings (1886-87), council votes and communications (1887), and a circular consisting of minutes and a financial report (1888).

Biographical / Historical

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada, founded in 1881, was the immediate predecessor of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The Legislative Committee of the FOTLU and the Executive Council of the AFL were the executive bodies of those organizations and were responsible for the conduct of the federations' affairs between the annual conventions.

Custodial History

The George Meany Memorial Archives received this volume sometime before 2007. The date of transfer is unknown, as well as who made the donation. The George Meany Memorial Archives transferred these records as part of a major transfer of their archive and library holdings to the University of Maryland Libraries in 2013.

Processing Information

When the AFL-CIO Archive was transferred to the University of Maryland in 2013, a review of existing finding aids was initiated. It was discovered that there was no finding aid for this significant item, other than a database entry, so a finding aid was created by Marian Currens to facilitate researcher access.

Lynda DeLoach at the George Meany Memorial Archives initially processed this collection in 2007. The University of Maryland Libraries received the item in 2013 when it was updated by Marian Currens. In 2017, Bria Parker exported and cleaned the finding aid contents from the Eloquent Systems database using OpenRefine, and finally transformed the finding aids into Encoded Archival Description (EAD) using a series of programmatic scripts. The finding aid was ingested into ArchivesSpace in 2017, at which point Jennifer Eidson updated the descriptive content for accuracy. Revisions include changes to biographical/historical notes, scope and content notes, and the creation of new collection numbers. Jennifer Eidson also enhanced custodial histories and re-wrote collection titles to better conform to archival standards.

Title
Guide to the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada, and American Federation of Labor (AFL), Early Federation records
Status
Completed
Author
Processed by Lynda DeLoach in 2007 at the George Meany Memorial Archives.
Date
2007
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
Finding aid written in English.

Library Details

Part of the Special Collections and University Archives

Contact:
University of Maryland Libraries
Hornbake Library
4130 Campus Drive
College Park Maryland 20742
301-405-9212