The Provincial Elders Conference is pleased to announce that Meaghan O’Riordan has been chosen as the new archivist for the Southern Province. Meaghan has been an archivist at Emory University’s Rose Library since 2016, where her career has focused on developing, implementing and overseeing a programmatic approach to ensure manuscripts, archives and rare book collections in all formats and across all collecting areas are appropriately tracked, accessioned, described, discoverable and available for use. She also completed several projects to enhance collection management, including a database of containers in the Library’s holdings, a database of Rose Library acquisitions from 2012-present and transcription of legacy accession records into ArchivesSpace.
Meaghan’s resume lists more than 15 professional presentations and 11 professional publications she has authored or coauthored since 2014 including most recently: Davis, R.K.J. & M. O’Riordan. Accessioning, archival in P. Franks (Ed.), The Handbook of Archival Practice, 2021. She is professionally active in the Society of American Archivists, for which she co-chairs the Best Practices for Archival Accessioning Working Group and sits on the steering committee for the Accessioning, Acquisitions & Appraisal Section. She also is a peer reviewer for the Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies and member of the Rare Books and Manuscript Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association.
A native of Welcome, N.C., Meaghan simultaneously earned two bachelor’s degrees at NCSU, one in English and one in Religious Studies, graduating summa cum laude. She holds two master’s degrees: an MS in Library Science from UNC Chapel Hill and a Master of Theological Studies from Emory University (with transferring credits from Duke University). After completing her MLIS, she worked in the Special Collections Research Center at North Carolina State University. She also has public library experience.
Meaghan is very familiar with the Moravian Church and its history and knows German. She and her husband were married in St. Philips Moravian Church.
The PEC expresses great appreciation to the search committee that shepherded the archivist search, including Margaret Burri, assistant director for Academic Liaison and Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University’s library; Dr. Kevin Cherry, retired deputy secretary and director of North Carolina’s Office of Archives and History, Dept. of Cultural Resources (the only committee member not a Moravian but who knows the Moravian Archives well); Heather Fearnbach, president and owner of Fearnbach History Services, Inc. and member of the Archives Commission; Paul Peucker, archivist of the Northern Province Archives; Tim Pyatt, dean of Wake Forest University’s libraries; Chris Thore, PEC president; and Peggy Carter, PEC representative on the Archives Commission.
A welcoming event will be held for Meaghan after she joins us in August.