Embedded Files
Searchable Catalog
The Shaker Historical Society has many collections that it researches, documents, preserves, and shares with the public. Most objects relate to the Shakers of North Union—their clothing, inventions, and tools—but there is a growing collection related to Shaker Village and the development of Shaker Heights as a community.
For the past two years, SHS staff and volunteers have been adding our collections to CatalogIt, a cloud-based collections management database. With over 1,300 items added and many more to go, this has been a time consuming but necessary move toward improved collections management and access. As of December 2025, nearly 800 items are available to the public through the museum's CatalogIt HUB.
These items have been catalogued using the More Product, Less Process (MPLP) approach, which focuses on minimal processing in order to reduce backlogs. This means that entries may have incomplete information and temporary photographs with a goal of further processing from volunteers and paid interns at a later time.
Do you have significants edits or information to add to these records? Please contact collections@shakerhistory.org
If you are looking for information or materials about a Shaker Heights person, place, or topic, please fill out our Research Request form.
If you would like a high-resolution image of an object in our collection for commercial, academic, or personal use, please fill out our Image Reproduction Request form.
Photograph Archives
The inventory and rehousing of our photograph archives was made possible through consecutive 2024-2025 grants from the Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board (OHRAB) and support from museum member John Barber.
The updated 2025 inventory and initial 2024 inventory are now accessible to the public here. Please note that this is a preliminary finding aid that may contain typos, inaccuracies, or incomplete information. These issues will be addressed as the project progresses in the coming years and as photographs are cataloged in CatalogIt. Photographs are digitized and added to CatalogIt on an ongoing basis.
Questions? Please contact collections@shakerhistory.org
Donate to the Collections
If you are interested in donating an object or archival material(s) to the collection, please contact collections@shakerhistory.org with description(s) and photograph(s) of the item(s) you wish to donate. Additional useful information to include:
How you acquired the item(s)
Where/from whom you acquired the item(s)
Time period of the item(s), if known
Average condition of the item(s)
How the item(s) relate(s) to the history of Shaker Heights, Warrensville Township, or the North Union Shakers
Please note: The Shaker Historical Society (SHS) is an Ohio History Connection (OHC) site. As such, OHC holds the right of first refusal for all donation offers to SHS. This means that any potential donation will first be offered to OHC for consideration. If OHC declines the donation, SHS may then choose to accept it.
Please see our Collection Donations Policy for more information on the subject areas and types of materials we collect.
We are actively seeking objects and archival materials that share underrepresented stories, including items related to:
Black residents, Black-owned businesses, and Black stories
Jewish residents, Jewish-owned businesses, and Jewish stories
Women residents, women-owned businesses, and women's stories
Integration in Shaker Heights
East View Village
Post-1950s history
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