Ronda Sewald

As Head of Monographs Image Cataloging, Ronda L. Sewald oversees the team responsible for cataloging much of IU Libraries’ distinctive materials, including artists’ books, children’s literature, photographs, maps, and other non-text formats.

Ronda has over 25 years of experience working with distinctive and cultural heritage materials. She first came to IU in 2000 to pursue a Ph.D. in folklore and ethnomusicology (2009) and a master’s degree in library science (2004). Before joining Technical Services as the Cartographic Resources Cataloger in March 2020, she worked for the Archives of Traditional Music, the MLA Folklore Bibliography Project, Sound Directions (the precursor of the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative), the Archives of African American Music and Culture, and the Black Film Center/Archive. She also served as IU Libraries’ Interim Head of Area Studies Cataloging in 2023 and 2024.

As a former project manager and archivist for three different archives dedicated to serving African American and indigenous communities, Ronda has experience working with a wide variety of world views and cultural heritage materials. She has had the extreme pleasure of supporting the research endeavors of African American scholars and artists while they explored a broad range of topics. Each of these encounters served as an opportunity to learn more about the barriers preventing the amplification and distribution of their work.

Ronda’s research interests include exploring:

• methods for improving subject headings and other descriptive metadata in a way that enhances the user discovery experience while also describing and categorizing cultural knowledge in a way that closely aligns with the world views and expectations of the communities creating—or that are represented by—academic works and special collections.
• more efficient workflows for describing distinctive collections.
• more flexible and customizable hiring practices, workplace environments, project workflows, and training and professional development opportunities to ensure that all employees can succeed and reach their full potential.
• the integration of yogic techniques—such as asana practice, breathing techniques, self-inquiry, and non-attachment—as management strategies that foster mindful leadership and support employee wellness. 

In addition to her committee and working group activities within IU and her membership in several professional organizations, Ronda has served as a liaison for the Big Ten Academic Alliance Geographic Information Network since 2021 and is active in improving descriptive metadata for maps stored in the BTAA-GIN Geoportal. Since 2003, she has also been an active member of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging's Volunteer SACO Trainers Group, which is a national-level working group dedicated to the improvement of training materials and resources in support of catalogers proposing and editing Library of Congress Subject Headings.

While her skill set includes everything from processing and digitizing large archival and multimedia collections to newsletter editing and exhibit curation, Ronda is particularly passionate about assisting the discovery of IU’s many treasures by researchers and students. She is equally fluent in MARC and EAD, and her experience with archival and audiovisual collections has allowed her to fully explore collection-, item-, and sub-item level cataloging while determining the degree of granularity best suited for supporting user discovery across a wide range of delivery systems. More about these skills, projects, and Ronda's list of publications is available at her website.