Inside the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies Reference Room, a display table offers some perusing not usually found in a business school. The sound of union music lies within the pages of such pamphlets as an undated “Let’s Sing!” booklet published by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.

The pamphlet offers this ditty, “Dressmakers’ Victory Song”:

Work was very weary,
Life was sad and dreary
Just a little while ago;
But in massive numbers,
Rose we from our slumbers,
And for freedom struck a blow.

Chorus:
Forward! Forward! the union challenge rings,
Forward! Forward! the dressmakers sing,
Evermore uniting,
Many thousand fighting,
March we on to VICTORY!

It’s almost infectious (depending on your vocal abilities). A 1955 “Let’s Sing!” pamphlet from the United Packinghouse Workers of America hopes so. It advises, “Sing a Union Song—at meetings, at banquets, at picnics, on the picket line.”

The Reference Room’s display features song books like these and other materials, including some LPs and biographies of union leaders.

A lot of unusual stuff has made it into the Reference Room collection over the last 50 years, Wolfe said. Some of the unique materials are donated by alumni or their families, whose own interests and historical moments are reflected in the collection.

The Reference Room is one of a handful of industrial relations libraries in the world. It is almost as old as the CHRLS itself, and it operates independently from the University of Minnesota Libraries. Such independence and the age of its collection can lead to a number of treasures.

“The Reference Room, like any good library, has a variety of materials for research and discovery,” Wolfe said.

The Reference Room has been creating monthly display of selections from its collection since last March. Often, the display correlates with other events, such as Black History Month or Women’s History Month, said librarian Sarah Goese, who creates the displays.

This month’s focus on union songs and music was inspired by a digital project at the University of California-Berkeley. A similar effort to collect union songs on the Internet by Mark Gregory at Macquarie University in Australia is featured on the Workday Minnesota Web site,  a collaborative effort of the CHRLS Labor Education Service and the Minnesota AFL-CIO. Gregory’s site includes lyrics and audio clips for approximately 100 union songs.

Many unusual materials like these song booklets have not been catalogued or made available, and now a number of efforts are underway to make it easier to find and study topics like labor union music.

“We have a lot of ephemera here,” Wolfe said, adding that such collections do have lasting value and are more than just curiosities. “People who do labor history or popular culture research would be interested in these unusual printed items,” she explained.

The labor music pamphlets are a subset of the many union pamphlets the Reference Room owns, Goese said. Over time, Wolfe expects that such Web projects as Berkeley’s will generate inquiries into collections like the Reference Room’s.

Perhaps a sign of a great library is that it can serve the most common needs of patrons and still harbor those obscure treasures found nowhere else.

“You never know what will come up,” Wolfe said.