The Wirtz Labor Library is the library of the

U.S. Department of Labor The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemploy ...

. It provides Department of Labor employees and members of the general public with access to both historically significant and current resources pertaining to labor. It is located in the

Frances Perkins Building The Frances Perkins Building is the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the United States Department of Labor. It is located at 200 Constitution Avenue NW and sits above Interstate 395. The structure is named after Frances Perkins, the U.S. Sec ...

in Washington, D.C. Established in 1917, the U.S. Department of Labor Library was created with the consolidation of the libraries of the former Children's Bureau and the

Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of t ...

. The Library's collection documents the history of labor, labor unions and the growth and development of the labor movement in a national and international perspective. The Wirtz Library won the

John Sessions Memorial Award The John Sessions Memorial Award is presented annually by the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association. It recognizes a library or library system which has made a significant effort to work with the labor communi ...

for library service to labor from the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...

in 2009.

Background

The library's online catalog provides access to all materials acquired since 1975 and to selected pre-1975 items. The library is the recipient of the 2009

. The Library was dedicated in honor of former U.S. Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz and his wife Jane Quisenberry Wirtz on March 28, 2000. It is a

federal depository library The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a government program created to make U.S. federal government publications available to the public at no cost. As of April 2021, there are 1,114 depository libraries in the United States and its t ...

, and in 2000 was designated a Millennium Library by the

White House Millennium Council The White House Millennium Council was an American organization established by Executive Order 13072 in 1998 by President Bill Clinton as part of the then-upcoming celebrations of the start of the year 2000. The council's theme was "Honor the Pa ...

in recognition of its unique historical holdings.

Collections

The library contains 181,000 items, including the James Taylor collection (labor history), the Folio collection (trade union serials), the department's Portrait Collection and a 30,000 volume labor law collection.

References

External links

* * Public libraries in Washington, D.C. United States Department of Labor Federal depository libraries {{library-stub