Megan O’Hern-Crook, C.A.
Director of Archives & Information Management | Records Wrangler
“I didn’t become an archivist so that a bunch of boxes could sit dusty on the shelves. Archives contain powerful information, and nothing brings me greater satisfaction than helping people use that information.”
Work at HAI
Megan is a trained archivist and project manager. She helps our clients understand, organize, preserve, and maintain access to their historical materials and electronic records. Through conversation, she helps prospective clients understand how they can reach their goals for their archives and collections. Megan is also responsible for supporting HAI’s team of archivists, collections managers, and records managers to ensure that they, and our clients, are set up for success.
As an archivist, Megan doesn’t specialize in just one subject—every collection she works with is unique and provides an immersive learning opportunity. Through her work with HAI’s clients and their collections, Megan has learned about the Mexican American civil rights movement, the treatment of psychiatric patients in the Soviet Union, the operations of modern political offices, environmental data collection in the Everglades, and beyond. Megan is also fascinated by the ways that technology has changed the way we create information. She keeps up-to-date on changing best-practices revolutions in methodology pertaining to electronic records. She also maintains HAI's institutional membership with the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress.
Megan specializes in collections assessments, action plans and roadmaps, archival organization and processing, cataloging, metadata creation, records management, collections management, and born-digital preservation.
Her clients include:
- Edgar Cayce Foundation
- King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
- Laborers’ International Union of North America
- Los Angeles County Library
- National Library of Medicine
- Sinai Hospital of Baltimore
- Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
- Town Creek Foundation
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- U.S. National Park Service
- Whitesbog Village
Path to HAI
Megan got her start in the field through working in public libraries. As a result, she is passionate about ensuring that information—and archives—are accessible to everyone. Before joining HAI, Megan worked with the AFL-CIO’s George Meany Memorial Archive at the University of Maryland. She also spent time working with the Maryland State Archives, where she conducted extensive historical research on the historic town of Brookeville, Maryland, “U.S. Capital for a Day” during the War of 1812.
Megan received her Master of Library Science along with her Master of Arts in History from the University of Maryland. She’s also a proud alumna of St. Mary’s College of Maryland (go Seahawks!), where she earned degrees in History and Museum Studies and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Though now a 20-year resident of Maryland, Megan is a Navy brat who has lived all over the country.