Bringing Order Out of Chaos
HAI Archives Consultants will help you manage and leverage your collections.
An archivist prepares to flatten a rolled document.
Collections managers prepare museum objects to be packed and relocated.
An archivist creates an inventory of a collection.
You know how quickly electronic records and historical materials can accumulate into a formidable web of information that requires substantial resource investments to untangle. Your collections contain valuable information, and we know that you have big ideas for how they can enrich your organization.
Without concrete goals, actionable strategic plans, professional expertise, or enough manpower, it can be difficult to know how to begin to manage your collections so that you can leverage them in order to provide greater access for you and your stakeholders, create engaging exhibits and narratives, celebrate an upcoming event, kick-off a brand heritage initiative, or plan for a major collections relocation.
We embrace innovations in our profession and updates in best practices while always respecting our clients needs, constraints, and privacy in order to create a customized approach to every situation. Our strategic partnerships with digitization, conservation, and transportation vendors allow us to offer a full range of services for projects both big and small.
Our professional expertise and passion for documentary heritage enables us to create a tailored, actionable approach to understanding your collections and what they have to offer.
HAI provides a variety of archives and information management services:
POINT OF CONTACT:
Megan O'Hern-Crook
Manager of Archives & Information Management
mohern@historyassociates.com
Direct: 301.279.9697
Featured Content
corporations successfully utilized HAI for professional archival services
nonprofit associations and institutions utilized HAI for professional archival services
federal agencies successfully utilized HAI for professional archival services
congressional offices provided with HAI records management and legacy preservation services
Featured Blog Posts
Frequently Asked Questions
Collections Assessments and Lifecycle Planning
A crucial first step in gaining control over your historical and digital collections is to comprehensively understand your collection’s content and develop plans for its future management, use, and access.
HAI’s expert team of archivists, records managers, and collections managers will work with you to evaluate the current state of your collections. A complete assessment will identify gaps in your current program, highlight immediate needs, and allow our team to deliver prioritized recommendations for future activities to ensure that your collections are adequately preserved, accessible, and effectively managed.
HAI Collections Assessment and Lifecycle Planning services include:
- Collections inventories
- Environmental and storage condition reports
- Best practices gaps reports
- Prioritized action plans
- Policy development and program planning
Archival Services
Your archive serves as a vital resource for collective memory. Successful archives programs keep historical and born-digital records well organized, preserved, and described for ease of access and use.
Whether you have a large collection of corporate memorabilia, a prominent family’s historical manuscripts and papers, a government office’s electronic records, a legal firm’s legacy paper records, or anything in between, our team of professional archivists will create a tailored, actionable approach to help you reach your goals.
HAI Archival Services include:
- Collections assessments
- Archival organization and processing
- Cataloging
- Web archiving
- Digital preservation
- Policy development and program planning
- Collections Management System (CMS) consulting
- Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) consulting
- Project management
- Staffing support
- Training
- Grant assistance
Collections Management
Your collections have value, but to make the best use of them, you need to know exactly what you have and where it is.
Our museum professionals provide hands-on expertise to help you gain greater intellectual control over your collections. When you’re facing projects that are not routine, we can help you expertly plan for and navigate them. With our trusted conservation and transportation partners, we can help you get your collections in a better state than when you began.
HAI Collections Management services include:
- Collections assessments
- Collections inventories
- Object cataloging
- Policy development and program planning
- Program management
- Collections Management System (CMS) consulting
- Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) consulting
- Collections relocation planning and tracking
- Project management
- Staffing support
- Training
- Grant assistance
- Preservation recommendations
Records Management and Information Governance
Effectively managed records are a key component to an effectively managed organization that encourages compliance, mitigates risk, and ensures that valuable information and knowledge is maintained.
HAI’s records managers and information professionals will partner with your team to assess your current records management and information governance programs at an enterprise scale to provide tailored, prioritized feedback and policies; implement records disposition; and train your organization for long-term excellence.
HAI Records Management and Information Governance services include:
- RM and IM program assessments
- Data hygiene assessments
- Retention schedule creation
- File plan creation
- Records disposition assistance
- Project management
- Staffing support
- Training
Digitization Services
Our clients are increasingly choosing to digitize their records to increase access, aid in preservation, create a cache of digital content to use in digital exhibits or brand initiatives, and comply with federal records management and transfer mandates.
Whatever your digitization goal, we combine the professional expertise of our archivists’, records managers’, and project managers’ with our strategic partnerships with digitization and digital preservation vendors to ensure that your records are digitized to industry standard and best practices.
HAI Digitization services include:
- Strategic planning
- Selection assistance
- Metadata creation
- Project management and coordination
- Quality assurance
- Grant assistance
