The Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection consists of approximately 500 interviews collected since 2002. Students, faculty, public school teachers and researchers from throughout Northeast Ohio have contributed to the collection, which covers a breadth of topics in Cleveland and regional history.
Notable series in the collection include interviews on the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, the City Club of Cleveland, Midtown Cleveland, University Circle Incorporated, Cleveland Artists Foundation, and Cleveland members of the American Institute of Architects. Additional interviews cover a wide variety of topics in Cleveland history, including neighborhood and institutional history, and political, social, educational and environmental history.
Interviews have been used for a variety of educational purposes, including Teaching American History workshops, and have been excerpted extensively as primary source material for interactive public history kiosks along the Euclid Avenue Healthline rapid transit corridor. The majority of the collection emerged from the Euclid Corridor History Project, a collaborative effort of students and faculty at the Cleveland State University Department of History, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, Cleveland Public Art, and Ideastream WCPN/WVIZ.
More materials from the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project will be published in the near future. For access to unpublished materials, contact the Department of History at Cleveland State University.
Organizations and individuals seeking to use materials for public exhibition and/or commercial use must obtain permission from the History Department of Cleveland State University. Use of materials for educational and research purposes is considered fair use.