The Industrial Relations Electronic Resource Book

Version 1.0 October 1997

By Richard L. Hannah

RLHANNAH@FRANK.MTSU.EDU

Http://www.mtsu.edu/~rlhannah/homepage.html

This document is the first draft of a text that summarizes Internet resources available to students, faculty and practitioners in the discipline and sub-fields of Industrial Relations (IR). Contents are evolved from a web page that has been maintained since 1995 by the author as the resource page for the Industrial Relations Research Association. The expectation is that this "book" will follow a somewhat different path with more formalized structure and commentary on the continuing evolution not only of online resources, but also of the online evolution of interesting and insightful dimensions of the IR scholarship and practice.

Examples of Internet Sites by Category

U.S. Federal Government Sources

The National Information Infrastructure initiatives include the goal of putting most U.S. government documents online for public access. Essentially this will allow students, instructors, researchers, and practitioners to bypass information intermediaries of the past, such as academic publishers specializing in reproducing governments data and documents. In this context the role of government as an information supplier is rapidly becoming indispensable in the educational process. In 1997 the Internet presence of state governments as information providers took a significant in volume and quality, although state universities had been an early Internet player. Both federal and state governments are important not only because of the volume and credibility of the electronic content offered, but also because of the stability of the web site address. Commercial and personal sites are very volatile and problematic because they are not well maintained or are discontinued.

Table 1 provides only a sample of several of the most popular sites for descriptive data and electronic documents. The table is not comprehensive, but is representative of the variety of resources available. This pattern of presentation will be followed for the other general resource categories presented.

Table 1

Examples of U.S. Government Sites

Document Title	Address	Description
Bureau of Labor Statistics Homepage	Http://www.dol.gov	Agency information, Media Releases, Statutory & Regulatory Information, DOL Programs, Labor Data, Grant & Contract Information
Census Current Population Survey	Http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/cpsmain.htm	History, Methodology, Data, Survey, and Supplemental Documents
National Labor Relations Board	http://www.nlrb.gov	Facts, Weekly Summary, Press Releases, GILS Records, Rules & Regulations
Occupational Outlook Handbook	http://stats.bls.gov/ocohome.htm	Searchable by Keywords, Special Information Features, Related Publications
National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee	http://www.noicc.gov	Promotes and Develops Information on Education and Work

Table 2 contains information on U.S. labor and employment law. This is specific to federal law only. There are several well maintained and well organized documents in this area, and these can be quite helpful for the novice trying to navigate through the Internet to uncover some basic resources.

Table 2

Examples of Federal and State Labor and Employment Law Sites

Document Title	Address	Description
Willamette Law School	http://www.willamette.edu/law/laborlaw	Free E-mail Service on Recent Developments & NLRB Weekly
Cornell Law Library	http://www.law.cornell.edu/focus/state_statutes.html	Topical Breakdowns of Information, and Uniform Codes & Laws by State
Will Yancey's Employment Law	http://zeta.is.tcu.edu/~yancey/emp_law.htm	Legal Directories, Newsletters, Topical Categories Including Labor Standards and Employee Rights & Responsibilities
Library of Congress	http://thomas.loc.gov	Updates, Bill Summaries & Status Reports

Table 3 samples two labor history sites. In early 1997 a request was made on several discussion lists for suggested sites, and several were submitted. However, of the half dozen state labor history sites, none were in existence at the same link less than a year later. This is another example of the ephemeral nature of personally maintained sites.

Table 3

Examples of Labor History Sites

Document Title	Address	Description
International Association of Labor History	http://www.iisg.nl/~ialhi	Newsletters, Conference Information, and Important Links
Canadian Labor History	http://www.mun.ca/library/colldev/labour/	Bibliography Organized & Searchable by Alphabetic Selection
U.S. Department of Labor History Site	http://www.dol.gov/dol/asp/public/programs/history/main.htm	History of the U.S. Department of Labor

Table 4 includes prominent international sites. In some cases the access may be in different languages and the user must specify. Also, the initial page accesses may show strange symbols until the English version of the text is linked.

Table 4

Examples of International Sites

Document Title	Address	Description
International Labour Organization	Http://www.unicc.org/ilo	General Resources for Data Acquisition, Special Documents on Child Labour, Employment & Training, Cooperative Developments & Others
Australian Center for IR	Http://www.econ.su.oz.au/acirrt/	Publication Abstracts & Conference Information
Data Base of Unions & IR in Germany	Http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~embe/dir.html	Searchable by Keyword
Japan IR	Http://comp-irh.tamacc.chuo-u.ac.jp/English.html	Comparative U.S. & Japan IR History
Taiwan IR	Http://www.cier.edu.tw/CIER1.HTM	Information on Research Projects, Publications, and Programs
South Africa IR	Http://www.workplace.co.za	Law, Data, Collective Bargaining & Trade Unions
India IR	Http://www.netfx.net/ananth	Indian Labor Law Searchable by Keyword

Table 5

Examples of Organized Labor Sites

Table 6

Examples of U.S. Labor & IR Centers and Institutes

Table 7

IR Teaching and Learning Sites

The Evolution of Discussion Lists

 Will include summaries of previous (primarily hard print) publications on the topic and an updated reference page with commentary on lists.

Industrial Relations in the Electronic Environment

 This section will incorporate the initial works contained at:

http://www.mtsu.edu/~rlhannah/etext/e_text.html

and

http://www.mtsu.edu/~rlhannah/HongKong.html