Corrective Collecting and Democratizing Documentation: Preserving, Interpreting, and Promoting Regional Workers’ History at the Labor Archives of Washington

The Labor Archives of Washington (LAW) is community-centered and specializes in documenting the history of unions and working people in the Pacific Northwest.¹ A collaboration between the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies and the Libraries Special Collections at the University of Washington, Seattle, and founded in 2010, the LAW’s collections, exhibits, and programs are heavily tied into its regional stakeholder communities. A community of stakeholders founded the LAW to address a crisis in curation, preservation, and access. During the 2008 economic recession, departing Special Collections technical services staff were not replaced. Curation and processing of hundreds of labor-related collections