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.

We are actively collecting and welcome donations that would help us tell the Shaker Heights story! Please contact collections@shakerhistory.org if you are interested in donating physical objects or archival materials to our collections.

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.

This pandemic is an unprecedented experience for most living Americans. The Shaker Historical Society is working to preserve the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of everyday Shaker Heights residents during this unique time for future use as a resource to help communities, medical institutions, researchers, and policymakers respond to future pandemics.

Who Can Participate: Anyone living, working, or visiting Shaker Heights.

What We Are Collecting: We are currently asking for digital donations of the items listed below. If you’d like to donate something that’s not on this list, or if you have physical items you’d like to donate, please contact collections@shakerhistory.org.

Photographs:

• Images documenting how COVID-19 has affected you or your community. This might include pandemic-related signs, deserted spaces, local businesses, people observing (or not observing) social-distancing guidelines, once-ordinary activities and events that are different now, health care, grocery-store shelves, how you and your family are surviving quarantine, e-learning and other activities that have gone virtual, etc.

• Please do not put yourself at risk in order to take a photograph. Always adhere to CDC guidelines to protect yourself and others from possible infection.

• Use these formats: .JPG, .PNG, or .TIF.

Audio or video recordings:

• Record yourself, or yourself and others, talking about how COVID-19 has affected your life.

• Please keep recordings under 25 minutes.

• Not sure what to talk about? For a list of possible questions, click here.

• Use these formats: .MP3, .MP4, .WAV, .MOV.

Journal entires:

• Write about how COVID-19 has affected your life.

• No length requirement

• Not sure what to write about? For a list of prompt suggestions, click here.

• Use these formats: .DOCX, .ODT, .TXT, .PDF.