The Columbus Metropolitan Library has promoted Angela O’Neal, the longtime head of its Local History & Genealogy division at Main Library, to public services director, the library system announced Wednesday, Oct. 28, in a press release reported by The Columbus Dispatch. O’Neal began the new role on Oct. 25 and becomes one of four public services directors for the system in Franklin County.
In the new position, O’Neal will oversee strategic direction, budget oversight, program coordination and operations at several Columbus Metropolitan Library locations, according to the library system. She will report to Charlie Hansen, the system’s chief public services officer, the library said in its press release, as reported by The Columbus Dispatch.
O’Neal has worked at Columbus Metropolitan Library for more than a decade, spending 13 years leading the Local History & Genealogy division. “Angela has worked to modernize and expand the impact of the Local History & Genealogy division over the last 13 years, bringing exhibits, programming, and high-quality service to customers at Main Library and our branches and establishing CML as a national leader in digital historical collections,” Hansen said in the library’s press release, as reported by The Columbus Dispatch.
Hansen also credited O’Neal with attracting significant grant dollars to the library system and using extensive community connections to expand its offerings, according to the press release reported by The Columbus Dispatch. That record in local history now moves with her into a systemwide role shaping services across multiple branches.
Among O’Neal’s best-known work is the creation and expansion of MyHistory, the library’s digital collection, which Columbus Metropolitan Library says contains more than 2 million items that are free for the public to browse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her team also unveiled MyUpload, a tool that allows members of the public to add their own photos to the library’s digital collection.
That digital-history work earned O’Neal the 2021 Ed Lentz Prize from the Columbus Landmarks Foundation, according to The Columbus Dispatch. In recent years she has also helped organize and produce material for the “Our History” page feature published weekly in The Dispatch on Sundays, extending the library’s local-history work to newspaper readers across central Ohio.
Before joining Columbus Metropolitan Library, O’Neal worked for more than a decade at the Ohio History Connection, the state’s history organization. She is a native of Amherst, Ohio, and earned her Master of Library and Information Science degree from Kent State University, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
For library users in Columbus and across Franklin County, the promotion puts a leader known for preserving and sharing local history in charge of day-to-day public services at several locations. Columbus Metropolitan Library has not announced a successor to lead the Local History & Genealogy division at Main Library.
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