Blogs

Belle Isle became Michigan’s 102nd State Park in 2014 through a lease agreement made with the City of Detroit. In honor of this occasion, the Reuther Library presents an exhibition of images that show the important role the park has played in the lives of Detroit’s residents. The exhibition will run from August 2016 to December 2016.  read more »

The Walter P. Reuther Library is pleased to announce the restoration, duplication, and digitization of two 16mm historic Wayne State University films. The Reuther’s Audiovisual department received a National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) grant that made all of the work possible. The historic films document the years 1925 and 1932 in Wayne’s history (before it was actually named Wayne State University) and are a part of a newly discovered series of silent films that span the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

The films give the viewer a glance into what college life was like for students nearly one hundred years ago.  read more »

This May, at the start of my last semester at Wayne State’s School of Library and Information Science, I began a Practicum in Digital Content Management here at the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs. Over the last three months I have spent many hours with Series 10 of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Collection. This series, which is mostly pamphlets and handouts, needed digitization to keep it alive. Access to the series was restricted, not for inflammatory content, but because of the fragile condition of the early 20th century documents. This made me a kind of digital life support for this information rich material.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce the digitization of over 100 reel-to-reel audio recordings related to the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). AWOC was chartered by the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to organize farm workers in California. AWOC called many strikes against growers and farm labor contractors and achieved some success in raising wages of farm laborers. They merged with the National Farm Workers Association to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO in 1966.

These recordings, mostly from California, range from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. They include talks with farm workers, organizing meetings, documentary sound, and interviews with movement leaders.  read more »