Collections
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 almost 700 items added and many more to go, this has been a time consuming but necessary move toward improved collections management and access. As of February 2024, over 200 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, please fill out our Image Reproduction Request form.
Donate to the Collections
The Shaker Historical Society is guided by a Collections Management Policy (CMP) that defines the scope of our collection and how we care for and make collections available to the public. Our criteria for the collection includes:
Objects and/or archival materials that help tell the story of the North Union Shaker Village, Warrensville Township, and/or Shaker Heights and the people who lived in this area
Objects and/or archival materials that we can properly care for and store
Objects and/or archival materials that are unique and/or underrepresented in our collection, particuarly related to underrepresented people or topics
If you are interested in donating an object or archival material(s) to the collection, please contact collections@shakerhistory.org with a description and photograph(s) of the item(s) you wish to donate. Please see the lists below for examples of what is currently held in our collection.
We cannot accept items that do not align with at least one of the above criteria and may decline your donation if the item does not fit the scope of collections, if the item cannot be properly stored or cared for due to limited storage space and resources, or if the item is a duplicate of a current collections item.
Objects are generally three-dimensional items that require more storage space.
Examples in our collection include:
Accessories (e.g. pocket watches, bonnets, etc.)
Anthropological artifacts (e.g. projectile points, etc.)
Farming or household implements
Framed artwork or photographs
Furniture
Textiles and/or clothing
Trophies
Archival materials are generally two-dimensional items that require less storage space.
Examples in our collection include:
Correspondence (letters, postcards, etc.)
Deeds
Ephemera (e.g. tickets, event posters or programs, etc.)
Maps
Pamphlets
Photographs
Scrapbooks or photo albums
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