Martin P. Catherwood Memorabilia

Founded in 1945 as the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, the ILR School today is advancing the world of work through teaching, research and outreach. ILR's mission is to prepare leaders, inform national and international employment and labor policy, and improve working lives, but as the world of work evolves, the school's focus broadens to keep pace with that change.

ILR studies many areas that shape the working world and contribute to an organization's success in a global economy. These include human resource management; labor-management relations; labor economics; organizational behavior; international and comparative labor; labor relations, labor law and history; conflict resolution; management development; diversity management; employment and disability; and social statistics.

An ILR education is grounded in the social sciences. Students and faculty explore and gain an understanding of human behavior through the lens of the workplace. Students also learn how organizations work and how they fit into the larger society and economy. As a result, they acquire knowledge and skills that help them to solve problems on-the-job and to build and manage productive work relationships. An ILR education, for students and professionals, is practical and applied.

ILR has more full-time faculty involved in teaching and research that spans the broad range of work and employment disciplines than any other educational institution of its kind. Its Martin P. Catherwood Library is regarded as the most comprehensive source of information in North America on work, employment and labor issues.



The Martin P. Catherwood Library, commonly known as the Catherwood Library or simply the ILR Library, serves the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. One of over a dozen libraries within the Cornell University Library system, the Catherwood Library is considered the most comprehensive resource of its kind in North America. The Catherwood Library's stated mission is to serve as a comprehensive information center in support of the research, instruction, and service commitments of the Industrial and Labor Relations School and Cornell community. The Catherwood Library is an official Depository Library of the International Labour Organization (ILO), one of only two in the country to be so designated; the other is the Library of Congress.