Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2016
Open clusters offer us the means to study stellar properties in samples with well-defined ages and initial chemical composition. Measurements of the projected rotational velocities for large numbers of cluster stars are becoming practical with the advent of multi-object spectroscopy, and such data make it possible to study the time evolution of the rotational distributions of massive stars. Investigations of these rotational distributions provide information on the angular momentum distribution in newborn clusters, the rotational spin-down due to wind loss, magnetic fields, and binary companions, and the incidence of spin-up due to mass transfer in close binaries. Here we review some of the recent observational studies and highlight some preliminary results from our work.