Participants in the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project are encouraged to review the information, sites and documents contained in the following FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

Who owns my interview recording?

Participants, including both interviewers and interviewees, are required to sign a permission form assigning ownership of the recording to Cleveland State University Center for Public History and Digital Humanities (CPHDH). This allows us to make the decisions necessary for long-term care of your interview as part of the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. After ownership is transferred to CPHDH, we immediately assign it a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which allows others to use your interview for non-commercial purposes (as long as they include the original source information and do not alter the terms of use established in the Creative Commons license).

Please review the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection permission form [PDF].

What are my rights?

As a participant, you have the same rights of usage as other individuals. You may freely use, copy, modify, and share the interview recording under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Further, CPHDH makes no claim of ownership to the intellectual contents of the interview recording. This means you are free to tell your story in any other manner. We do not own your story, just one particular recording.

Please review the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection permission form [PDF].

Where and how will my interview recording be archived?

Your interview recording will be archived in the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection, maintained by the Michael Schwarz Library at Cleveland State University. In preparation for publication, the recording will be processed by staff at Cleveland State University. This processing entails the creation of an index, abstract, and other metadata that will allow others to find and use the interview on the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection website.

Please visit the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection.

How will my interview recording be used?

In addition to its publication on the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection website, your interview recording may be used in any number of ways by researchers, students, teachers, family members, and members of the general public.

The Creative Commons license allows for a broad array of non-commercial creative uses, in addition to use by researchers. Some examples of creative use may include the creation of audio excerpts from your interview (such as those that appear on Cleveland Voices and Cleveland Historical), the creation of short topical videos (such as those that appear on the CPHDH YouTube channel), use in classroom presentations, and sharing on social media or other websites.