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.
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1 Items : Bound volume, red leather
English
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).
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.
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.
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.
Part of the Special Collections and University Archives